rwsh@hound.UUCP (R.STUBBLEFIELD) (10/25/85)
REASON AND VALUE Re: Nat Howard's statement: "I think we'd [Nat Howard and Paul Torek] both agree that POLICIES must be rationally defended (even if I think of reason as a derived value and Paul thinks of it as a wired-in one)." I think of reason as both a derived value and a wired-in value. I think Aristotle's definition of man is still the best: "Man is the rational animal." This succinctly states the essential distinguishing characteristic of man's nature--his ability to reason. It is a fact that man has a rational faculty. It is also a fact of man's nature that reason is valuable to him. The value of reason is "wired-in" to man. Reason is the fundamental method he uses to produce the values required for human existence. But the fact that reason is a value is not known automatically by you (or at all by many). Any fact you know is a result of your application of reason--your integration of the evidence provided by your senses. The fact that reason is a value to man is not self-evident as is the fact that light is different from dark. The value of reason is grasped after many observations have been integrated into concepts and those concepts have been integrated into still higher abstractions. This is the sense in which reason is a derived value--more precisely, the knowledge that it is in fact a value is derived. The fact of its value is metaphysical (i.e., an aspect of reality not subject to change by man). The knowledge of the fact is manmade--a product created by human action--some men acquire it; others do not. Maybe it should go without saying, but I believe the correct ground on which Nat and Paul should meet is the opposite of that posed by my fictional dictator (of an earlier posting). The dictator said Nat should give up freedom and continue to hold values as not subject to reason while Paul should keep believing that force could achieve values and give up on reason. The dictator, in short, was for faith and force. The opposite meeting ground is reason and freedom--not just when you feel like it, but in principle--without compromise. Whenever Nat wants to exclude some area of human knowledge from reason--such as values, he invites the dictator to use force. And whenever Paul wants to allow force to achieve values, he sides with the dictator in attacking reason. to reason while Paul should give -- Bob Stubblefield ihnp4!hound!rwsh 201-949-2846