Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cbsck.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbsck!pmd From: pmd@cbsck.UUCP (Paul M. Dubuc) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Ends and means (do you know what you are saying Paul?) Message-ID: <1702@cbsck.UUCP> Date: Mon, 16-Dec-85 11:29:29 EST Article-I.D.: cbsck.1702 Posted: Mon Dec 16 11:29:29 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 17-Dec-85 05:42:45 EST References: <1538@hound.UUCP> <1671@cbsck.UUCP>, <335@l5.uucp> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories , Columbus Lines: 41 A response to Laura Creighton: >>Reason isn't exactly a floating abstraction, but it does need to operate >>from certain precepts. Reason does not provide its own precepts. >>I value reason because it allows me to apply the precepts that I accept. >>(I think it is that best and most proven tool for the job). I don't value >>it in itself. In the same way, I value a hammer because it allows me to >>drive nails. Reason is a tool (like a hammer) that does not justify >>itself. Its value is justified by its usefulness in performing >>necessary tasks (e.g. doing ethics) according to our accepted precepts. >>Everyone has these precepts, whether or not they recognize them as such. >>The thing that I find hard to accept is the contention that precepts >>are the product of reason itself. The necessity to drive nails is not >>derived from a hammer. > >I don't know whether you recognise this but the old ``I don't value the >hammer in itself'' is the basis of all The Ends Justify the Means arguments. >Extreme defenders of this view argue that you cannot make value judgements >about *how* you do something, merely about certain things that you will >accomplish. Then, if what you want to accomplish is very good you can >do anything. Most people do not buy this extreme argument, but seem >content to argue over whether or not the ends were very good. I think you are presenting false alternatives. Saying that I don't value a means in itself does not mean that I use ends to justify it. I see no problem with judging the worth of both ends and means with the accepted precepts which I spoke of later in my article. The first parenthetical remark that I make in the paragraph you quote here is and example of my judgement of the means of reason. I don't judge it as being arbitrarily valuable based on the ends it meets. >... It may not be that a hammer is valuable >in itself, but to use the appropriate tool for the job *is*. Exactly. This implies that we judge the means as well as the ends. I hope you didn't think that I was trying to say that a wrench would be as good as a hammer for driving nails (:-)). Of course the ends don't justify the means, but neither do the means justify themselves. -- Paul Dubuc cbsck!pmd \/-\ /\-/