Quote: (02-10-2019 02:17 PM)Aurini Wrote:
Quote: (02-10-2019 01:54 PM)Heuristics Wrote:
Quote: (02-10-2019 01:10 PM)Aurini Wrote:
Great analysis of Ayn Rand's philosophy by the Distributist:
TLDW; there is no place for children in Rand's philosophy, nor do they appear in her novels, because their very nature is that of the parasites whom she reviles.
From the Atlas Society (Objectivist/ Randian think tank) on children and mainstream objectivist legal and ethical views on the subject:
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In the Objectivist view, the rights of human beings arise from their rational faculty and their ability to live as independent producers and traders. All rights, including rights like free speech and property, are consequences of—and can ultimately be reduced to—the one basic, fundamental right: the right to be left free from the initiation of physical force.
Rights in this sense do not apply directly to children. While it is difficult or impossible to distinguish the precise moment that a child matures beyond the state of non-rational dependence, all children must pass through such a period of development. If the basic right is freedom from coercion, this is the exactly the right that children—for their own sakes—must be denied. Children must be made to eat their vegetables, get their rest, go to school, etc., and children often demonstrate impetuous unwillingness to complete these and many other important tasks. In fact, applying rights principles to children could cause them outright harm. Imagine if one had to wait for a baby’s consent before feeding it or changing its diaper!
Ethically, Objectivism is opposed to any unchosen or undeserved duties. In this context, however, Objectivists generally acknowledge that parents, in creating (or adopting) a dependent child, choose for themselves the obligation to raise that child to a healthy adulthood with the power to exercise his rational faculty (if he so chooses). This obligation implies that the parents must undertake certain tasks at least to some minimal standard, including feeding and clothing the child and providing him with a basic education.
The legal implications of children’s lack of rights are more difficult to discover and define. If children have no rights, doesn’t that leave parents or even perfect strangers free to harm or kill them?
While children do have the full rights of adults, they deserve to have their right to live and not suffer violent attack respected.
Various Objectivists have developed theories on this subject. Generally, these theories hold that while children do have the full rights of adults, they deserve to have their right to live and not suffer violent attack respected, in virtue of their status as biologically independent human beings with the potential to develop into fully rational and socially independent adults.
One of these theories is by William R Thomas, and is available on the internet if you want to read more about it. Thomas has crafted a legal theory that affords some protection for children based on tort damages, without relying on the dubious claim that they possess rights. (See here .) Thomas points out that one’s right to file a tort lawsuit does not demand that one was in full command of reason when the relevant harm was inflicted. One has the right to demand compensation for damage wrought—even while asleep or unconscious—that persists into periods of wakeful alertness. Moreover, in such cases, the police should not allow an aggressor to continue to abuse a victim, since it would only add to the victim’s suffering once he regains consciousness. Some crimes, including murder, even preclude the possibility that the victim will file suit against his aggressor. For these cases, criminal laws ensure that offenders cannot escape justice by preventing their prey from filing civil suits.
This applies to children because, though their full exercise of reason may be years in the future, they nevertheless possess such a potential throughout childhood. In stalling a child’s physical or intellectual development, parents would inflict harm on a person who one day could come to possess rights, including the right to sue for torts. They could also starve him to death before he ever reaches the age of majority. Legal authorities should not permit abuse of children (whether by parents or others) to continue, and criminal laws specifying the grounds for police intervention are appropriate.
So it is true that Objectivism denies that children possess “rights,” in the full sense of the word. Some may find this viewpoint disturbing, but it is the recognition of the truth about rights and children’s nature. Still, Objectivist scholars have amply demonstrated that, within such a framework, there are still ethical and legal guidelines one should follow in raising one’s children.
TLDR: Objectivists have fairly reasonable views about children, all things considered. Views that would not be out of place among the general public. Just as the law recognizes that children aren't rational adults, so does objectivism. Objectivism gives minimal legal and ethical standards for raising children-- parents are required to care for their children because it's an obligation they took on. Children are not adults... Simple enough.
And yet, none of her novels contained children. That reads more like a 'patch' on a system that is failing in one particular area. Furthermore, if that document were adopted, would it prevent the exploitation of the Little Sisters in Bioshock? It seems to me that it would justify it; they're free from undue harm, they're clothed, fed, and provided for, they're even granted powerful protectors who have a strong emotional bond with them.
It’s clear why her novels didn’t contain children, the philosophy of objectivism (philosophy for rational individuals, ie not children) is expounded mainly her in novels, but also in other works (read: straight philosophy books, pamphlets) which maybe you’re not familiar with her purely philosophy works. There are written comments she made on children as well as interviews out there too, I’m too lazy to find them. In Anthem, she talks about children.
Atlas Shrugged:
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The recaptured sense of her [Dagny's] own childhood kept coming back to her whenever she met the two sons of the young woman who owned the bakery shop. . . . They did not have the look she had seen in the children of the outer world--a look of fear, half- secretive, half-sneering, the look of a child's defense against an adult, the look of a being in the process of discovering that he is hearing lies and of learning to feel hatred. The two boys had the open, joyous, friendly confidence of kittens who do not expect to get hurt, they had an innocently natural, non-boastful sense of their own value and as innocent a trust in any stranger's ability to recognize it, they had the eager curiosity that would venture anywhere with the certainty that life held nothing unworthy of or closed to discovery, and they looked as if, should they encounter malevolence, they would reject it contemptuously, not as dangerous, but as stupid, they would not accept it in bruised resignation as the law of existence.
Her big novels, fountainhead and atlas shrugged are just a portion of her work. Children wouldn’t be the focus of her novels because her novels are outlining objectivism— objectivism is for adults, children are not adults. It’s like focusing on something that has little relevance to her arguments.
I have no clue about bio shock, but it has nothing to do with Ayn Rand, if anything it is a derivative work, and if that’s where you’re getting you arguments against objectivism, I don’t know what to tell you. It has no place in the Objectivist canon of works. It's a game.
I linked mainstream objectivist opinions on children in my above post, largely in line with what Rand would think.. You didn’t respond to any of the relevant stuff I bolded.
I will repeat: objectivists believe children aren’t rational, parents have an obligation to care for them because it’s an obligation imposed on them when they chose to have children, children have the right to life and not to suffer. And that to become rational children have to develop first, ergo they are not rational at that point.
Also, I don't understand your problem with objectivism. "Video game bioshock has children not being taken care of, thus objectivism is bad"? That seems like what you're saying.