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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (48463)	3/8/2014 5:42:27 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

"Declaring that the ultimate purpose of Man is to survive is a completely arbitrary and unsupported assertion." If that is not what is important to you, then you have no need of any philosophy or ethics. If existence and non-existence are of equal merit to you, then fine. What brings you to this discussion? Ultimate Value "An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means—and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism’s life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil. Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of "value" is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of "life." To speak of "value" as apart from "life" is worse than a contradiction in terms. "It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible."

To: Greg or e who wrote (48463)	3/8/2014 5:45:41 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

"The Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue of Selfishness, 17 "The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold one’s own life as one’s ultimate value, and one’s own happiness as one’s highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one’s life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness. It is by experiencing happiness that one lives one’s life, in any hour, year or the whole of it. And when one experiences the kind of pure happiness that is an end in itself—the kind that makes one think: "This is worth living for"—what one is greeting and affirming in emotional terms is the metaphysical fact that life is an end in itself. "Like your example of how you are "helping" drunks by fleecing them of their money at the poker table" Your "misunderstanding" (deliberate or otherwise) was explained here: Message 29428415