Ethics

By Dr. Leonardo Delizo, PhD., MSBA

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What is Ethics?

Ethics is the branch of study dealing with what is the proper course of action for man. It answers the question, "What do I do?" It is the study of right and wrong in human endeavors. At a more fundamental level, it is the method by which we categorize our values and pursue them. Do we pursue our own happiness, or do we sacrifice ourselves to a greater cause? Is that foundation of ethics based on the Bible, or on the very nature of man himself, or neither?

Some years ago, sociologist Raymond Baumhart asked business people, "What does ethics mean to you?" Among their replies were the following:

"Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me is right or wrong."
"Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs."
"Being ethical is doing what the law requires."
"Ethics consists of the standards of behavior our society accepts."
"I don't know what the word means."

These replies might be typical of our own. The meaning of "ethics" is hard to pin down, and the views many people have about ethics are shaky.

Like Baumhart's first respondent, many people tend to equate ethics with their feelings. But being ethical is clearly not a matter of following one's feelings. A person following his or her feelings may recoil from doing what is right. In fact, feelings frequently deviate from what is ethical.

Nor should one identify ethics with religion. Most religions, of course, advocate high ethical standards. Yet if ethics were confined to religion, then ethics would apply only to religious people. But ethics applies as much to the behavior of the atheist as to that of the saint. Religion can set high ethical standards and can provide intense motivations for ethical behavior. Ethics, however, cannot be confined to religion nor is it the same as religion.

Being ethical is also not the same as following the law. The law often incorporates ethical standards to which most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings, can deviate from what is ethical. Our own pre-Civil War slavery laws and the old apartheid laws of present-day South Africa are grotesquely obvious examples of laws that deviate from what is ethical.

Finally, being ethical is not the same as doing "whatever society accepts." In any society, most people accept standards that are, in fact, ethical. But standards of behavior in society can deviate from what is ethical. An entire society can become ethically corrupt. Nazi Germany is a good example of a morally corrupt society.

Moreover, if being ethical were doing "whatever society accepts," then to find out what is ethical, one would have to find out what society accepts. To decide what I should think about abortion, for example, I would have to take a survey of American society and then conform my beliefs to whatever society accepts. But no one ever tries to decide an ethical issue by doing a survey. Further, the lack of social consensus on many issues makes it impossible to equate ethics with whatever society accepts. Some people accept abortion but many others do not. If being ethical were doing whatever society accepts, one would have to find an agreement on issues which does not, in fact, exist.

What, then, is ethics? Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that impose the reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical standards include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate standards of ethics because they are supported by consistent and well-founded reasons.

Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one's ethical standards. As mentioned above, feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what is ethical. So it is necessary to constantly examine one's standards to ensure that they are reasonable and well-founded. Ethics also means, then, the continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly-based.

Why is Ethics important?

Ethics is a requirement for human life. It is our means of deciding a course of action. Without it, our actions would be random and aimless. There would be no way to work towards a goal because there would be no way to pick between a limitless number of goals. Even with an ethical standard, we may be unable to pursue our goals with the possibility of success. To the degree which a rational ethical standard is taken, we are able to correctly organize our goals and actions to accomplish our most important values. Any flaw in our ethics will reduce our ability to be successful in our endeavors.

What are the key elements of a proper Ethics?

A proper foundation of ethics requires a standard of value to which all goals and actions can be compared to. This standard is our own lives, and the happiness which makes them livable. This is our ultimate standard of value, the goal in which an ethical man must always aim. It is arrived at by an examination of man's nature, and recognizing his peculiar needs. A system of ethics must further consist of not only emergency situations, but the day to day choices we make constantly. It must include our relations to others, and recognize their importance not only to our physical survival, but to our well-being and happiness. It must recognize that our lives are an end in themselves, and that sacrifice is not only not necessary, but destructive.

Basics: Life as the Moral Standard, Morality is a Guide to Living, Reason is Man's Means of Survival, Values, Virtue, Self-Interest, and Harmony of Interests

Man's Life as His Moral Standard

For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Life is the process of self-sustaining and self-generating action. Life requires action, and action requires values. Philosophy in general, and ethics in particular, attempt to answer the questions, "What do I do?" and "Why?" People study philosophy so they can know how to live their life.

So that you can live life successfully and happily, you must learn which values to hold and how to achieve them -- this is your life as your moral standard. All moral questions (questions of right action) are questions of how to live happily and successfully, and all moral principles must be measured against how they promote and benefit your life and happiness. Your life as your moral standard holds all things promoting your life as the good.

To every living thing, there is one primary choice, and that is to live or not -- to engage in the action required to further its own life or to engage in action that destroys its own life. The only other alternative is death. Choosing life as your standard of value is a pre-moral choice. It cannot be judged as right or wrong; but once chosen, it is the role of morality to help man to live the best life possible.

The opposite of choosing life is altruism: the moral doctrine that holds death as its moral standard. It holds sacrifice as the only good, and all things "selfish" as evil. According to altruism, it doesn't matter what you do, as long as it does not further your life it is considered good. The more consistently a person is altruistic, the closer their actions are to suicide. The consistent altruist will give up every bit of food he owns to other people because that is what he considers good, and die because of it.

Your life as your standard does not mean Hedonism -- the spur of the moment instant gratification, doing whatever you feel like. Your life as your standard means acting in your rational self-interest. Rational self-interest takes into account the long-term effects of every action.

Your life as your standard does not mean trampling on other people to get what you want. This is not in your rational self-interest. It is in your interest to be benevolent.

Nor does your life as your standard mean cheating people to get ahead, even if they don't realize it and you never get caught. Fraud is not in your rational self-interest because you lose your independence and you sacrifice honesty to an unreality that you have to maintain to perpetrate your fraud. This is self-destructive in the long run.

In order to know what is good, which actions are objectively in a person's self-interest, we develop virtues which are principles of action.

Morality is a Guide to Living

Choosing to live is a pre-moral choice, after which, the question becomes "How?" This is the same as "What do I do?" One can either go about it randomly or with a methodology designed for success. That methodology is called morality.

An explicit morality allows one to choose rationally among values. It makes the selection of values rational by providing a method to evaluate them. Values are compared to a moral standard, and prioritized according to how well they promote that standard. To make decisions easier, we develop virtues which are moral habits which tend to help gain values.

Historically, the concept of morality has often been used negatively as a list of thou shall not's in check against ones actions. The stance taken is often that it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you don't violate any moral edicts; but the source of these moral edicts is often mystical or arbitrary.

A list of prohibitions, even if founded in reason rather than mysticism, is not a sufficient outline for success. Morality should be positive rather than negative. Not What shouldn't I do? but What should I do?. The problem with defining morality negatively is that pretty much anything goes provided one avoids a few problem areas. This is not useful because within the sphere of pretty much anything goes, there is no methodical way to choose which action is best, whereas positive morality sets forth habits which lead to the achievement of values and methods for choosing what to value which is the way to live and thrive.

With ones own life as the standard of value, morality is not a burden to bear, but a prudent and effective guide which furthers life and success.

Reason is Man's Means of Survival

Man's essential characteristic is his rational faculty. Man's mind is his basic means of survival--his only means of gaining knowledge...
In order to sustain its life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature. The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.
Ayn Rand, "What is Capitalism?"

Homo Sapiens are not particularly fast. They don't have sharp claws or teeth. They don't have hard shells nor can they digest grass. They can't fly, spit poison, or release skunky stink bombs. So why are there so many of us? Bears should have eaten us all a long time ago. No -- we humans are still around because we're smarter than the average bear.

Man's mind is his tool of survival. The mind is used to gain, use, store, and recall knowledge. It is his mind that enables a farmer to know what to plant, when to plant it, how to nurture it, when to harvest it, how to prepare food from the result. It is his mind that enables a hunter to know what he needs to make a spear, how to make it, and how to use it. And it is his mind that enables a blacksmith to know what rocks contain ore, how to extract the ore, and how to make a forge and tools. In short, it is the mind that enables a person to know what to do in order to survive.

Man's mind allows long-range planning and thinking. It enables such long-range planning as required for farming, hunting, and tool making. These endeavors require the ability to conceptualize long-term cause and effect chains. "I need to make a spear tonight so I can hunt tomorrow and have food for the next 7 days." There may be some environments where people could survive for a while without long range planning, but without the results of knowledge like spears, fire, and other technologies, people would get out-bred by other animals and die out.

Man's mind is his tool for survival, but like all tools, it must be properly used. The mind manipulates knowledge, and knowledge can only be obtained through reason. Without reason, there is no knowledge, and thus no survival.

You must recognize reality and act in accordance with it in order to be successful (reality is absolute). To the extent that you use reason as your method of judgment in knowledge and action, you will survive and flourish. To the extent that you ignore or evade reality, you will suffer and die.

It is very important to note that survival by reason requires the freedom to act according to your reason. This is why men do not thrive under coercion, and can not survive when they are subject to the initiation of force by others.

Values

Values are that which we seek to achieve or maintain according to our life as the standard of evaluation. Values are the motive power behind purposeful action. They are the ends to which we act. Without them, life would be impossible. Life requires self-generated action to sustain itself. Without values, one could not act, and death would follow.

Value specifies a relationship between a person and a goal. A value requires a valuer--a particular person who aims to achieve or maintain something. An object cannot have value in itself. Value is relational, and so requires a person and a goal. The goal to which one aims is called the "value", but the relationship is always required. This means an object cannot be a value in itself. It only gains the title of value when a person acts to achieve or maintain it.

Values are essential to ethics. Ethics is concerned with human actions, and the choice of those actions. Ethics evaluates those actions, and the values that underlies them. It determines which values should be pursued, and which shouldn't. Ethics is a code of values.

Virtue

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, c. 350 B.C.

A virtue is a moral habit which generally results in the gaining or maintaining of your values. Your values are based on your moral standard which should be your own life. Virtues are pre-thought out methods for achieving your values. This means that with rational virtues, acting virtuous leads to a happy and successful life.

This is very different from the traditional mystical view that there is some "good" out there which is opposed to your natural tendencies and you constantly have to choose between what you want and what is "good". There is no choice to be made between some "mystical good" and your own life, morality is not a limit on action. What is "good" is actually that which is in your rational self-interest -- there is no conflict.

It is important to keep in mind that virtues are not absolutes. Or, put another way, they are contextually absolute. They are not to be followed blindly and dogmatically. Virtues only apply within the context in which they were formulated. To understand the context and when a virtue applies is why you must understand the "why" behind the "what" of each principle. When it is not clear whether a virtue applies or how to apply it, you must fall back onto your ultimate standard of value, your life, to guide your actions.

Rational Virtues: Self Reliance / Independence, Productiveness, Integrity, Honesty, Pride, Justice, Benevolence, and Rationality

Independence

Independence, or self reliance is the virtue by which you are self-supporting in the sense that you consume nothing that you haven't earned. In a market economy, everyone lives by trade. This does not make independence impracticable. The virtue of independence is to provide one's own means of subsistence. This means either producing it directly, or indirectly by creating something that someone else wants. Dependence, in this case, would mean relying on charity or favors from friends or family. Or worse, theft in the form of direct stealing from others, or indirect theft through benefits by government.

Independence is not only applicable to production, though. In fact, production isn't even the most important place where this virtue should be practiced. The most important is the independence of one's mind. Life requires man to act in order to achieve his values. This requires the proper use of judgment to not only pick the right values, but to understand the best way of achieving them. To substitute another's thoughts for yours makes it impossible to judge the accuracy of them. It makes it impossible to build off of them to achieve better understanding. This is the area where independence is most critical. To default on one's responsibilities is to default on one's life. The degree to which one abandons his intellectual independence is the degree to which he is helpless to act. The degree to which he cannot pursue his own life and values.

Another area where independence is useful is in social interaction. When dealing with friends or strangers, one needs to earn the benefit of the interaction. To default on this is to accept a reward without cause. Nothing is ever free, though. By accepting the unearned, a man loses his grasp of what it means to earn something. He loses his assurance of his own self-efficacy. Every independent act is a reaffirmation of one's ability to deal with reality. Every unearned gift is a blow to one's confidence.

Self-Interest

Man's interest is defined as that which benefits his life. It is an evaluation of the facts of reality. Since the nature of man's life has particular, objective requirements, determining whether something promotes his life is a statement of fact.

One's interests should not be confused with one's desires. A desire is that which you wish to achieve or acquire. A desire can be subjective or irrational. One's interests, though, are objective facts of reality. They don't state what you want to achieve. They state what you should achieve to promote your life.

A proper morality is based on man's self-interest. It is based on what allows him to live and flourish. Identification of his interests allows him to decide how to act, and what values to pursue. It is the measure of right and wrong.

Harmony of Interests

With a proper understanding of one's interests, it can be seen that there is a harmony of interests between rational men. That we benefit enormously from positive interactions with others. This benefit comes in the form of the abundance of wealth made possible by a Capitalism, to the continuing increase of knowledge available to mankind. It comes in the form of friendships, romantic love, and the support of one's family. The harmony of interests bring men together in peaceful cooperation to benefit their lives. This is the bedrock of society. It is why people choose to live in a society.

Although the desires of men may be opposed, their interests are not. Living in a peaceful society is of incalculable benefit to man. Any possible advantage gain from living outside of a peaceful society is insignificant compared to the loss. For instance, living in a wilderness may bring you more peace and quiet, but it is at the expense of friendships and the enormous material wealth possible in a society.

The harmony of interests only exists between rational men. Irrational men and the use of force are not in the interests of other men. Men's interests are only in harmony with peaceful, voluntary interactions. Only when men live by the Trader Principle do their interests unite. Only when men accept persuasion and trade do they become a benefit to other men.

Productiveness

Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things easy.
Benjamin Franklin

Man must achieve values in order to live. Productiveness is the virtue of achieving values. It is the fullest use of one's mind in seeking and achieving those values. It's primary use is in the creation of wealth. To live, men need physical wealth (meaning food, shelter, etc.) in order to survive. Wealth beyond the minimums is necessary to hedge against the uncertain future. The more wealth created and saved, the better chances one has of survival. Productiveness is the virtue of creating this wealth. It is directly responsible for the forwarding of one's life.

Productiveness in a market economy doesn't mean the direct creation of goods. It means the earning of goods through the creation of value. By trading goods or services, one enables the creation of wealth by others for one's own use. Trading is a kind of productiveness. It is another method of practicing productiveness. The result and aim is the same, though. The creation of wealth.

Productiveness is also applicable in other aspects of ones life. In social relationships, for instance, it is possible to create value. And even outside of material wealth, one can be productive by achieving values. Productiveness then isn't dependent on producing physical goods. It consists of producing values for oneself.

A last note on productivity is that it must be profitable to be called productive. This means the cost of doing something must be less than the value achieved by doing it. In this respect, many acts can be considered non-productive after the fact. Mere profitability, or the gaining from an act, is not sufficient for productivity, though. The virtue of productivity means achieving the most one can achieve. Working at a fast-food restaurant is not productive if one has the ability and opportunity to be a brain-surgeon. Spending ones resources (time and effort) on a lesser value when one could achieve a higher value is not productive.

Integrity

Integrity is the virtue of practicing what one preaches. Or more importantly, practicing what one believes is right. A 'man of principle' is not a man who understands a principle, but a man who understands, accepts, and lives by a principle. There are many reasons why integrity is a virtue.

The first and most important reason to practice one's beliefs is that if they are right, you will be benefiting your own life. To understand other virtues or principles, and not act by them, is destructive. It is an act against your own best interest. Any deviation from what you know to be right is an attack on your own life.

The second reason to practice integrity is that it is an affirmation that your ideas benefit your life. To act contrary to your own knowledge is accepting the premise that morality is somehow different from you own self interest, and that bypassing morality will somehow make your life better. Instead of seeing morality as a tool for survival, you see it as a restriction that make life more difficult. Every act that violates your integrity weakens the moral habit, until your emotions are unaligned with your thoughts. Further, it is an attack on the efficacy of one's mind. To act against your own ideas is to claim your own incompetence, or to claim the general inadequacy of reason to guide your life. Since reason is your means of survival, you will be abandoning your life.

A third reason to practice integrity is in dealing with others. A man who practices what he preaches is predictable, and few will feel threatened by it. Trust can develop, since others will come to realize you are consistently virtuous. To act without integrity, even occasionally, will leave others distrustful. This can negatively impact one's life in a number of ways. People won't allow themselves to become emotionally close to you. They won't trust that you'll pay back debts. They'll always fear your betrayal.

Honesty

Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud -- that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness becomes the enemies you have to dread and flee -- that you do not care to live as a dependent, lest of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in fooling -- that honesty is not a social duty, not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Pride

Pride, then, seems to be a sort of crown of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, c. 350 B.C.

Pride is the virtue of respecting oneself. It is a human need to think highly of oneself. Without it, one would have no reason to trust one's ability to live. One would have no reason to accept that one's life is worthy of living.

Pride is often confused with arrogance. Both seem to evaluate oneself highly. The difference is fundamental, though. Pride is a rational evaluation of oneself. Arrogance is not. Pride requires one to think highly of one's accomplishments and abilities. But the accomplishments and abilities need to be worthy of the praise. Without them matching, the false pride will lead to self-hate when reality undermines the attempted illusion. If one's abilities are not as good as one would like to pretend, it is just a matter of time before they are genuinely tested, and the results will destroy the flimsy self-esteem.

True pride, on the other hand, is rational. It has the secondary consequence of making an person want to improve himself in order to feel greater pride. This secondary effect, though, is not the reason for accepting pride as a virtue. Pride is virtuous because one needs it to live. It is the pillar the supports one's mind. Without it, one would constantly question one's ability to make rational judgments. It would undercut reason, man's primary means of survival.

Justice

Justice is the virtue of treating people in accordance with their actions. It is applying the law of identity to people. All people are not equal. Some are good and some are evil and they must be treated accordingly.

Acting justly requires the willingness to judge. You must identify people and their actions as being good or evil and act on it. Justice is judging and acting on your judgment. But judging requires a standard of judgment, and that standard should be the same as your moral standard, man's life.

Injustice is turning the other cheek or showing mercy to wrongdoers. Those actions are evasions of reality because you are acting as if a person hasn't acted the way they have. Injustice is also not recognizing achievement and greatness in others -- specifically treating an achiever as a non-achiever or worse. Judging people by methods other than their actions (such as racism) is also an injustice.

Acting justly is in your self interest because good people around you will feel recognized and continue their good behavior. Bad people around you will be encouraged to stop their bad behavior because of the consequences. Also, the people around you will tend to treat you justly, which is a good thing assuming that you live a normal, productive life.

Benevolence

In his book, Unrugged Individualism, David Kelley describes how benevolence is not altruism and not simply a response to misfortune in others. It is the active pursuit of the enormous value that we can get from relationships with other people. Benevolence, as a major virtue, is key to living by the trader principle.

Opportunities for trade do not simple present themselves. They must be created through our own initiative. The world does not beat a path to our door; we must go out to meet it; we must extend ourselves. In order to obtain the benefits of living with others in society, we cannot function solely as judges, we must also function as entrepreneurs.
David Kelley, Unrugged Individualism

Trade creates enormous value, both material and non-material. The benefits of economic trade are well documented throughout the field of economics. Some of the non-material values achieved through trade are friendship, love, exchange of knowledge, mutual protection, and visibility. Benevolence is the commitment to create trade and trading opportunities.

Benevolence can bee seen as optimism applied to other people and relationships. It does not consist of any particular set of actions, but a general good will towards others based on the benevolent universe premise: Successful trading relationships with others are the to be expected, so treat other people accordingly. For example, if you are optimistic about other people and relationships, then perhaps you will treat a stranger like you would normally treat an acquaintance and an acquaintance like a friend. This broadcasts a friendly, non-hostile, attitude and a willingness to trade which is a prerequisite for peaceful interaction.

Benevolence is not the same as altruism. Altruism dictates that you sacrifice yourself for the benefit for others -- that their need is a claim on your actions. Benevolence enables you to achieve your values from relationships with other people. Benevolence is very much like productiveness in its use as a tool for achieving value.

By giving a person the benefit of the doubt when interacting with them, you create opportunities that would not be available if you always assume the worst about people and act like it. This mainly manifests itself in the form of civility. Politeness takes little effort and can often achieve a lot. Politeness and the assumption that another person is not out to cheat you pave the way for beneficial interaction.

Trust between people can be built up over time and founded on the past actions of the other person; but it has to start somewhere. Initial trust is based on a positive outlook on humanity and the likelihood that the other person is a good example. Benevolence is this optimism applied to the other person. Economic trade, exchange of knowledge, and mutual protection all require some level of trust between people.

Traditionally, benevolence as been seen as being in conflict with justice. The Christians like to talk about "tempering" justice with mercy, and many rugged individualists hold justice so highly and irrationally that they view benevolence as treason to reality. These attitudes only apply is benevolence is seen simply as mercy and generosity in response to another persons suffering or need. As Ayn Rand pointed out in her "Ethics of Emergencies" essay, helping another in an emergency is a marginal issue in philosophy because, according to the benevolent universe premise, failure and suffering are the abnormal and not to be expected. They are not metaphysically important.

David Kelley points out that benevolence is never in conflict with justice. He writes that benevolence is to justice as productiveness is to rationality. Justice is the identification and judgment of people and their actions, and the decision to treat them accordingly. Benevolence is the pursuit of value based on those identifications and that decision. Benevolence is not an end in itself -- it is a means to the end of your own life.

Benevolence is a commitment to achieving the values derivable from life with other people in society, by treating them as potential trading partners, recognizing their humanity, independence, and individuality, and the harmony between their interests and ours.
David Kelley, Unrugged Individualism

Rationality

The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action. ... It means a commitment to the principle that all of one's convictions, values, goals, desires and actions must be based on, derived from, chosen and validated by a process of thought.
Ayn Rand

Rationality is the habit of acting by reason, which means in accordance with the facts of reality. The only alternative is acting by whim, which because reality is absolute, will result in undesired consequences. This is because an action based on a belief in a particular cause-effect relationship will not occur if that relationship is invalid.

A second consequence to acting irrationally is that it undermines one's ability to act rationally in the future. By choosing to act irrationally, you are confessing your lack of trust in your own mind. The more often you do this, the more you will believe what you are practicing. You will accept that the mind is impotent, and that you cannot make the right decisions. This undercuts your ability to live, since reason is man's means of survival.

Rationality is in your self interest because the only way to achieve desired outcomes is to act according to reality. To understand reality, one must use reason consistently. Any deviation can have long term problems, since one's knowledge is often derived from one's previous knowledge. To accept a false belief once can have the effect of polluting all further knowledge, until the mistakes are cleared away and the new knowledge reevaluated.

Rationality does not mean being a perfectionist in one's thoughts and ideas. It does not require you to spend enormous amounts of time evaluating every idea. It does not require you to learn everything there is to know, to become an expert at every topic. Rationality means acting according to reason. It means accepting only that which you have reason to believe. It means using logic to weed out any contradictions. It means when you have to accept the judgment of another, you use your own mind to determine whether you should. Is the person educated in that field? Is it knowledge that someone is capable of having? From what you know about the rest of his ideas, is he someone you believe will be correct? Rationality is foremost a method of survival. It is a virtue only to the extent that it encourages one's survival.

Specifics: Self Reliance / Independence, Productiveness, Integrity, Honesty, Pride, Justice, Benevolence, and Rationality

Technicalities: Metaphysical Justice, Free Will, Courage, and Trader Principle

Metaphysical Justice

They that will not be counseled, cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you on the knuckles.
Benjamin Franklin

Since reality is absolute, any attempt to evade acting according to objective reality will result in unforeseen and likely unwelcome consequences. This is called Metaphysical Justice or "Reality sneaking up and biting you on the ass".

Metaphysical justice is a kind of justice. In other words, it is the method by which people get what they deserve. It doesn't require other people to enact the justice. Reality is fully capable of providing the result. To avoid confusion, this does not mean that some supernatural entity provides the justice either. No, this kind of justice is served by the Law of Identity.

When one acts according to a correct view of reality, the result will be predictable. If one aimed for a beneficial result, the result will be beneficial. This is because the trail of cause and effects one had decided on was correct. If, however, the view of reality is distorted, evaded, or just mistaken, the results will not occur. Along one of the causal steps, a different effect will occur. This unintended consequence will remove the beneficial result, and leave some other effect, harmful or not.

The justice portion of Metaphysical Justice is based on ones choice to act rationally, or irrationally. If one acts rationally, he will be rewarded by gaining the value which he is pursuing. If one acts irrationally though, one will not only lose the reward, but may be punished as well. This has the nice feature of encouraging rationality while discouraging irrationality. In this sense, reality is providing the justice for a moral/immoral act.

Free Will

Every existent acts causally in accordance with its identity from electrons to brain neurons to conscious minds. The world is entirely determined in a physical sense, but the question of free will boils down to a question of context.

Within the context of your mind, your consciousness is not a bunch of atoms held together in a particular way, but a perceptual and rational faculty that processes percepts into concepts from the lowest to the highest. This includes the creative process and problem solving. There is never something created from nothing -- there is no such thing as a divine inspiration; it is all a rearrangement of what was previously there.

Both within the context of consciousness and the context of interpersonal relations, people do have free will. This means that they do make choices, they act on those choices, and they are responsible for those choices.

Courage

Courage is the ability to act in the face of danger and uncertainty. Although it is more of an emotion or state of mind, it is an important part of one's life. This is because the future is always uncertain. We can acquire understanding of the world, but there are too many factors to accurately predict the future. Or more importantly, to be certain that our prediction will come to pass. This is because we can make predictions that end up being accurate (even guessing works sometimes), but we have no means of knowing whether it will really occur.

Even danger is constantly present. There is no completely reliable way of avoiding danger. We can lessen the risk in many respects, but we cannot avoid it entirely. Even staying in our homes constantly does not remove risk.

Nor would we want to. Life is not just about avoiding death. It is about achieving values and happiness. Courage must overcome both the fear of danger and uncertainty. They must be pushed aside in order to get on with the business of living. Living with courage, in this respect, is virtuous.

The Trader Principle

The trader principle is the principle of attaining value from other people through mutually beneficial trade rather than force, fraud, or parasitism. It is the principle that one should consume as much as he earns, no more and no less. People should interact with each other peacefully and for mutual gain.

If a man has something to offer to another man, he should be able to convince the other of this through the use of reason. No force is necessary unless the other cannot be convinced. The trader principle states that man should trade value for value as opposed to force for value or non-value for value. This is based partly on justice, in that people should get what they deserve.

The trader principle applies to the non-material realm as well as the material realm.

Love, friendship, respect, admiration, are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character.

Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics"

One should not love another for their faults, but for their virtues. One should not befriend another because the other needs a friend, but because the other, by virtue of his character, has something to offer. Just as with material objects, one should not devote time and effort and emotional investment into another person unless that person has some kind of value with which to repay. One should only trade value for value.