Re: my current position (was: AUDA)

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 10:41:29 -0700

On 11-Jan-02, Wei Dai wrote:

> I don't agree with this, because as I said earlier people expend effort to
> obtain results that they'll never see, for example by writing wills.
> Clearly what is a gain for a subject is not only based on first person
> experiences. Suppose someone offered you $1000, but if you accepted Earth
> would be destroyed and everyone on it killed as soon as you die. Would you
> take that offer? Even if you did I'm sure most people wouldn't.

I think you take to narrow a view of first person experience. Most people feel
anxiety contemplating their surviving children being destitute or the end of life on Earth. That feeling is a first person experience as much as any other.

Brent Meeker
  "Philosophie ist der systematische Missbrauch einer eigens zu diesem Zweck
entwickelten Terminologie."
         ---Wolfgang Pauli
Received on Sat Jan 12 2002 - 13:29:03 PST