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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Reason gets no respect from Berman
Message-ID: <351@l5.uucp>
Date: Sat, 21-Dec-85 16:44:59 EST
Article-I.D.: l5.351
Posted: Sat Dec 21 16:44:59 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Dec-85 05:49:41 EST
References: <1538@hound.UUCP> <1671@cbsck.UUCP> <334@l5.uucp> <906@mmintl.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 34

In article <906@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
>Whoa!  None of this follows.
>
>First, what is your starting point?  If you are starting with selfishness,
>then you value your ability to reason, but not necessarily anyone elses.
>
>Even if you do value reason, it is a bit of a jump to value anything which
>reasons.  This certainly doesn't lead to valuing humans equally; some can
>reason better than others.
>

Two points here -- *I'm* the one who just said that valuing reason does not
lead to valuing human beings equally. okay?  Also, the starting poing was
whether the initiation of force was compatible with valuing reason.  But I
can go back to selfishness if you like.

I am not an ostrich who can bury my head in the sand whenever it is
convenient.  Therefore, I could not value my ability to reason without
valuing everyone elses, even if I wanted to.  What kind of twisted logic
full of self-serving lies would I have to resort to to maintain this?
Would I have to ignore that other people have the ability to reason?
Would I ascribe a different source for my ability to reason than theirs?
If I valued me, because of my ability to reason I would be compelled to
value others for their ability to reason.  To deny their value, would
be to deny my value and this is inconsistent with selfishness. [Hmm --
this would be inconsistent with rational selfishness, which is what I
am discussing. If you are irrationally selfish then no doubt you could
behave like an ostrich.]  The ability to generalise is fairly basic to
exercising reason.  

-- 
Laura Creighton		
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa