Introduction
[1] see, for example, Rasmussen and Den Uyl's Liberty and Nature vs. David Norton's Personal Destinies, and their very different judgement of the role of material production in the good life.
I: Determining what is needed for survival
[2] Liberty and Nature
[3] "The Ethics of Flourishing: Aristotle vs. Rand", lecture [presented at the IOS summer seminar, 1993.
[4] Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 216}
[5] I thank David Kelley for this analogy.
[6] For a detailed discussion of the value-significance of biological organs and processes, and of survival as the standard of value in biological processes, see Harry Binswanger, The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts.
[7] I thank Irfan Khawaja for this example.
II: Determining what is needed for man's survival
[8] Atlas Shrugged, Signet paperback edition, p. 944.
[9] For a discussion of the existential role of principles, see Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, pp. 217--219.
[10] Atlas Shrugged, p. 947
III: Hard cases
[11] See, for example, Rand's analysis of dishonesty, through the example of selling fake gold shares, as related by Peikoff in Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, pp. 270--271.
IV: Survival and constitutive means
[12] Atlas Shrugged, p. 939
[13] The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 25; italics mine.
[14] I thank Irfan Khawaja for drawing my attention to this distinction.