> Objectivism has merits around notions of reality being singular and shared by everyone in one way or another, and (hypothesis mine) if everything derives from a singular reality, by understanding this singular reality we should be able to in a certain sense understand everything (including ethics, art and morality, which I think is highly counterintuitive)
But this is a violation of Hume's Guillotine. You cannot derive "ought" statements from "is" statements. There is only one reality, and science can tell us how it is, but science cannot tell us how it ought to be, how much we should like it, or in what ways we should want to alter it.
Rand and her followers fail in their attempted logical chain by leaping from "humans evolved rationality as a tool to survive and enhance their lives" to "enhancement of each individual's life via self-interest is the standard of moral value", which is non-sequitur. Rationality is the ability to make plans and accomplish goals, the fact that it exists does not tell us which goals we should use it in the service of.
She smuggles in her own pre-existing moral preference when she defines individual flourishing as the ultimate moral good. You can see this very easily if you take the exact same syllogism and substitute "community interest" for "personal interest". In fact this modified version of the argument may be even more valid, since a defining feature of humanity even more than our rationality is our unique community organizing power, which is also evolved, and thus community service also serves perfectly well as an evolution-informed yardstick of moral value.
But this is a violation of Hume's Guillotine. You cannot derive "ought" statements from "is" statements. There is only one reality, and science can tell us how it is, but science cannot tell us how it ought to be, how much we should like it, or in what ways we should want to alter it.
Rand and her followers fail in their attempted logical chain by leaping from "humans evolved rationality as a tool to survive and enhance their lives" to "enhancement of each individual's life via self-interest is the standard of moral value", which is non-sequitur. Rationality is the ability to make plans and accomplish goals, the fact that it exists does not tell us which goals we should use it in the service of.
She smuggles in her own pre-existing moral preference when she defines individual flourishing as the ultimate moral good. You can see this very easily if you take the exact same syllogism and substitute "community interest" for "personal interest". In fact this modified version of the argument may be even more valid, since a defining feature of humanity even more than our rationality is our unique community organizing power, which is also evolved, and thus community service also serves perfectly well as an evolution-informed yardstick of moral value.