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From: baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Reason gets no respect
Message-ID: <716@spar.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Dec-85 03:59:53 EST
Article-I.D.: spar.716
Posted: Mon Dec 23 03:59:53 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Dec-85 20:47:59 EST
References: <1538@hound.UUCP> <1671@cbsck.UUCP> <334@l5.uucp> <709@spar.UUCP> <350@l5.uucp>
Organization: The Institute of Impure Science
Lines: 31

> >I can accept the idea that those who can reason have some implicit
> >positive value.  I do not see how it follows from this that the
> >use of violence against such beings is *necessarily* inconsistent
> >with my valuing of reason, since there may be things to be gained
> >by the use of violence that I value *more* than the reasoning ability
> >of my victim.  Of course, depending on who I am, that might be anything
> >from the safety of my children to my next fix.
> >
> >
> >						Baba
> 
> I think that we are not using ``value'' in the same way.  You cannot value
> reason and then abandon it when it becomes convenient to do so -- or rather
> there is a sense of the word ``value'' that is consistent with this meaning,
> but that was not the sense in which I was using the word.  I do not initiate
> violence on people because I value them -- and anyone who would initiate
> violence upon another and still claim that they valued them would have a lot
> of explaining to do, beginning with this inconsistency.
> 
> Laura Creighton		

It is not a matter of abandoning values.  It is a matter of recognizing
that life betimes pits our values against one another.  I do not initiate
violence on people because I value them, whether they can reason or not,
and because I live in a sufficiently comfortable niche of a sufficiently
comfortable society that I do not have to weigh some portion of that value
against the nonzero value I would assign to, say, my survival.

Reason exists to further life, not the reverse.

					Baba