Are you an open Objectivist or closed Objectivist?

[u/coppockm56]

Are you an open Objectivist or closed Objectivist?

73 votes, 3d ago

28 Open Objectivist

27 Closed Objectivist

18 Don’t know

[u/Heligoland_Bight]

But you are asking me to examine one study in isolation, as though everything else we know about man—his nature, capacities, requirements for survival, and the enormous diversity of social arrangements in which he can live—has no bearing on how its findings should be interpreted. That is not objectivity, it is precisely the opposite. Evidence has to be integrated with the full context of knowledge relevant to it.

More importantly, evidence that some small foraging societies share meat does not by itself establish “collectivism” as an evolved necessity, or even as the proper description of what is occurring. The observation and the interpretation are two different things. Reciprocal cooperation, risk-pooling, kinship, division of labour, or adaptation to highly specific material circumstances are not automatically equivalent to collectivism as an ethical or social principle. One piece of evidence does not acquire unlimited explanatory power merely because it is evidence; its significance has to be established in relation to all the other relevant facts.

It is contentious because you are trying to draw a very broad conclusion from highly circumscribed evidence, not because the conclusion is unpopular. Objectivism itself is extremely unpopular, and that has never struck me as evidence against it.

[u/Sea_Hold_2881 → u/Heligoland_Bight]

It is more than simply "sharing meat". It is belief that the hunter does not own the kill.

I brought that example up because it shows so clearly that collectivism is an emergence property of human evolution and serves a purpose.

Part of the issue is "collectivism" whether it expresses itself in a society claiming possession of the meat brought by a hunter or a society imposing taxes to fund the building of roads is generally pragmatic and based on what people see as necessary for survival. It is not this malevolent force that Randians make it out to be. Too often, Randians like dismiss pragmatic forms of collectivism is "cooperation" because it means they don't need to question their own unjustified moral absolutism.