Depends on what sort of an answer you want. If you want an answer that starts from the premise that you do not care about anyone, and you want a self-interested reason that you should; that is, a way of bootstrapping egoism in other-regarding behavior, you are not likely to find it. That, I take it, is part of the lesson of Gauthier's failure. He is a very smart philosopher at Pitt whose Morals by Consent is the latest best attempt we have to do this.
So if you will, here is a concession: there is no reason that I can give a stone egoist to care about anyone else--no internal reason, that is. Obviously I can threaten the egoist with bad things that will happen to him if he acts on his selfish desires.
Does the inability to answer the egoist mean that _we_ have no reason to care about one another, thosre of us who are not egoist? Of course not: our feeling for each other is a reason to act on it. I really suspect that this is the best we can do. I do not regard the egoist's challenge as very important because there are few if any real egoists. --jks _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.