So how do we choose goals to consider? We have to make choices about what we want. It’s up to us to decide what we value.
Goals are ideas we can criticize. However by what standard can we criticize goals by? You can critique it by saying it is hard or impossible to achieve. If we only consider goals that are plausible, then we ask: what goals would lead to good if they were achieved? This is perhaps more of a morality question. Rand’s idea was that there was an ultimate goal, life, that all other goals are subordinate of. Epistemology might be very relevant though because it seems similar to ultimate foundations and final truth.
“It’s up to us to decide what we value” seems to suggest relativist morality, but I think Elliot thinks there exists objectively good values. I think he means that we have to guess/conjecture at good values. Does objective values logically require an ultimate value? If there are epistemological issues with knowing the ultimate value, it might still exist like the final truth exists.
I think I could write more, but I might not have time to write more for a couple of days, so I’m posting this for now.