dr_who@umcp-cs.UUCP (08/21/83)
Reply to Tom Craver on agreements, self-esteem, and jumping to conclusions: You say that it is not rational to agree that you will do something even if the risks become high. But suppose such a commitment is essential to the agreement -- the other person has no self-interest in the agreement unless you make such a commitment. E.g., two cave men must kill a large, dangerous animal -- it is the only food around -- and they must both commit themselves to make a risky attack on the animal if it goes for the other guy. Without such a commitment from the other one, it is in neither's interest to join cooperatively (too high a risk of death). It looks to me like both would be better off if they made such an agreement (and kept it of course). As for third party enforcement, that is not always available, and almost never for free. If self-esteem depends on respecting rights because disrespecting them is wrong, I ask: whence these rights, especially their normativity? If harming others denies that one has rights, what's so bad about that -- why should a selfish person care whether he has rights (as opposed to being treated AS IF he had them)? ---------------------- On what you mean by "one values the other person", you didn't answer my questions of whether this means one thinks her to be valuable, and if so, valuable for what, and thinks on what grounds? Do you disagree that "valuing X" means "thinking X to be valuable"? Perhaps you meant to say that one thinks on the grounds of her "sense of life" -- but does one value her as an end in herself (not for the sake of any further thing)? If so, how can that be *derived* from self-interest? It seems to me that valuing another person as an end in herself can only get started by leaving the self-centered viewpoint. Also, this value seems to be determined by emotion, whereas I thought you said values were determined by reason. On the car-vs-operation example, you try to escape the point that acting out of love for another does not always increase one's long-term happiness, even though the love is real. As far as the move to "mild" pain, just consider a corresponding change in the amount of benefit from the new car. Or better yet, just forget it -- stick with moderate pain -- because it will NOT necessarily prevent the wife from living and loving fully. Many people live and love fully in the face of sometimes severe pain. The wife's pain must not be vastly more important than the car, or else the guilt of not providing the operation would be too much. Let's say that the man judges that if he were in similar pain, he would see the pain's end as twice as important as the car. Now the fact of the matter is, although with some effort you can refuse to admit it, that one's guilt feelings in such a case would not outweigh the happiness value of the temptation. Of course, if one puts it in such crude terms, one's love will immediately balk at the idea of trading off guilt against the temptation. One's heart will insist, "how guilty *I* would feel about it is not the point; it's how *she* would feel that is the real reason against being tempted." But that is exactly my point: one's heart is right. On the hurt foot example, you point out that it makes no difference *who* experiences the pain -- but suppose the pain would be worse for Adam because his injury would be more severe. In that case, I would have chosen to take the pain myself, even though the guilt feeling of hurting Adam would have hurt less. That choice would have been taken in order to achieve the purpose of Adam's welfare -- and there is my example of an actual (as opposed to claimed) purpose other than self-benefit. (That the choice is hypothetical is irrelevant: I saw that I was about to step on Adam's foot at the last second; I tried for his sake to avoid it; and if I hadn't tried to avoid his foot I probably wouldn't have landed on the edge like I did and twisted my foot. And I did not regret that it wasn't Adam who got hurt instead.) I propose another example: losing your life for a loved one. I can think of very few cases where life after not-playing-hero would not be worth living. I can think of considerably more numbers of cases where your life is less important (you have less of it left, e.g.) than the loved one's. In other words, I think that being a coward would not make for a life worse than no-experiences (which I assume you will agree death is). A truly selfish person would be a coward in some such cases. (By the way, please try not to trade on the normative force of the word "coward". I'm sure you can think of or invent a more neutral word.) ------------------- "Another could experience a derivative pleasure at seeing the pleasure of one that they value for some other reason, and they would value the derivative pleasure, and hence the original pleasure." But this has it backwards: one does not value the original pleasure because one experiences derivative pleasure. One feels derivative pleasure because one values the other person's happiness in the first place! --Paul Torek, U of MD College Park