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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Reason gets misunderstood everywhere
Message-ID: <383@l5.uucp>
Date: Mon, 30-Dec-85 16:56:33 EST
Article-I.D.: l5.383
Posted: Mon Dec 30 16:56:33 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 2-Jan-86 19:50:21 EST
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Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 58

>First, a question: do you value yourself because of your ability to reason,
>or do you value your ability to reason because you value yourself?  If
>the answer is the former, then your basic principle is not selfishness;
>it is love of reason.  I will assume the latter for the remainder of this.

Neither.  I cannot divide a strong wall between my ability to reason and 
myself.  I do not value my ability to reason in the same way as I value
my workstation.  If I lost my workstation I would be out an incredible
sum of money, but not my self.  If I lost my ability to reason then I
would have lost my self.

So I value reason as a tool, but I value reason as myself as well.  I value
compassion and creativity the same way -- I am not saying that I am nothing
but my ability to reason.  I cannot make a strogn distinction between my
ability to reason and me, however.

>
>So you value your reason because it is useful to you.  Generalizing, you
>realize that other people's reason is useful to them, and that they
>should value their reasons.  But this gives you no reason for you to
>value their reason, because your reasons for valuing yours are not applic-
>able to theirs.  The source for their ability to reason is quite irrelevant,
>because the source of the reason has nothing to do with why you value it.

Of course it does!  Why do I value myself?  Because I am wonderful, creative
intelligent, kind and compassionate.  But other people are also wonderful,
creative, kind and compassionate.  They are also full of the same intrinsic
worth that I recognise in myself.   I can take delight in your existence --
indeed to not take delight in someone else's existence is to miss out on
one of the great joys in life.

>
>To reiterate: selfishness means valuing *yourself*; not valuing yourself and
>things like yourself.  Rationality means considering the consequences of
>your actions and their repurcussions (sp?) (this definition is too narrow;
>but it covers the current situation).  Rationality lets you value other
>things besides your starting values, but only on a contingent basis: because
>they serve your purposes.  It doesn't cause you to value other things in
>and of themselves.

I am having another hard time understanding here.  I suspect that this is
because I have a wider sense of ``my purposes'' than you are ascribing, but
I could be wrong here.  I value people in and of themselves, and I value
myself in and of itself.  if I did not do this, I would have a hard time
maintaining my very good opinion of myself.  To value yourself consistently
is hard -- there are too many people telling you that you should loath
and be ashamed of yourself.  If you do not have very soud reasons for valuing
yourself, then you will stop valuing yourself.

So in a very real sense the greatness of other people are to my purpose --
by recognising greatness in myself and others I can continue to be
selfish.  Is this what you mean by ``my purpose''?  If not, what do you
mean?

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