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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Reason gets no respect from Berman
Message-ID: <28200399@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Dec-85 22:03:00 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.28200399
Posted: Mon Dec 16 22:03:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Dec-85 19:17:07 EST
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Nf-From: inmet!janw    Dec 16 22:03:00 1985


In article <1671@cbsck.UUCP> pmd@cbsck.UUCP (Paul M. Dubuc) writes
(as quoted by Laura: I didn't get the article):
>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.

Would Paul consider a competing point of view:
You *are* your reason  ?
If you reject this, what other components of your psyche are *you*,
and *use* the reason as a tool ?
And in case you think it's your immortal, God-given soul,
does not the reason have the same origin ?

If reason's value is justified by its usefulness, who (other than
reason)  determined  that  it  *is*  useful? If the truth is what
works (a pragmatist view), how do we know pragmatism works ?

My own view is this: reason may have developed as a tool, just as
brain  did  during  evolution. It has *become* a goal, a value in
itself, just as my brain is *me*, much more than is my foot.

Means become goals in the normal course of individual, as well
as philogenetic, development. Also, in the course of the
development of an *idea* in individual or collective consciousness.

The most valuable concepts often developed  as  useful  tools  in
solving  problems  that  are  now far less interesting than these
concepts. Can a 5th degree  equation  be  solved  in  radicals  ?
Doesn't matter much now, but group theory does.

Religious tolerance in Europe was a useful compromise,  a  di-
plomatic  formula  to give competing religious truths a breathing
spell. Then people discovered that  it  is  a  beautiful  ethical
principle in its own right.

The next paragraph is my response to  several  debates  that  have
raged here:

*Basic* values (concepts, principles) are  not  *primitive*  values
(concepts, principles). Being basic is an *emergent* property.
One way a value becomes basic is by being very useful for many
other values.

		Jan Wasilewsky