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From: tsf@THEORY.CS.CMU.EDU (Timothy Freeman)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism
Subject: Re: Def'n of individualism
Summary: Leapin' logics!
Message-ID: <1304@PT.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: 4 Apr 88 21:32:35 GMT
References: <3386@dasys1.UUCP> <2146@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <2523@bsu-cs.UUCP> <1281@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> <11046@ut-sally.UUCP>
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Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
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In article <11046@ut-sally.UUCP> turpin@ut-sally.UUCP (Russell Turpin) writes:
>In article <1281@PT.CS.CMU.EDU>, tsf@THEORY.CS.CMU.EDU (Timothy Freeman) writes:
>> ... if you make decisions
>> taking into account things other than peer pressure, then one
>> naturally assumes that others may make decisions independently of
>> their peers, so treating them as individuals is obviously necessary.
>
>Necessary for what purpose? 

I was arguing for "psychological plausibility" here, to claim that
most of the people that consider themselves individualists by one of
the definitions I was proposing would be individualists according to
the other.  In this post I failed to separate the mushy logic people
use to decide how to deal with others from the hard logic that I'm
really claiming is true.  Oh well.

To continue my folly, I'll try again.  Here's the chain of mushy
reasoning that will cause many independent-thinker type individualists
to be treat-others-as-individuals type individualists:

  I'm an independent-thinker type individualist, so
  I can think different thoughts from those around me, so
  it is possible for people in general to do this, so
  I had better be prepared for other people to do it, so
  I cannot assume that others will be identical to groups they are a
      part of, so
  I'm a treat-others-as-individuals type individualist.

Does that make more sense to you?
-- 
Tim Freeman

Arpanet: tsf@theory.cs.cmu.edu
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