Survivor!

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Tue Oct 24 12:07:41 PDT 2000



>
> >>> cgrimes at tsoft.com 10/24/00 02:12PM >>>
>
>So that's the end of it. Well, one thing that Chris posted early on
>were words to the effect, why should I care what the fuck happens to
>other people? This is obnoxious, but it was never really answered
>

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.

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