Re: my current position (was: AUDA)

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 20:24:13 -0700

Hello Wei

On 15-Jan-02, Wei Dai wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 15, 2002 at 12:47:18PM +0100, Marchal wrote:
>> This is because I include in the first person its possible
>> compassion feeling for what are possible others. (This is
>> similar to what Brent Meeker said in its last post).
>> Compassion, although it bears on others, is a feeling, isn't it?
>
> But what is the compassion about? In this case it's about events that
> you'll never experience in the first person. If you want to reason
> about your compassion and make rational decisions based on it, you
> have to do it from the third-person point of view.

I don't understand "reason about your compassion". The point is that
you have a feeling about a possible future you imagine and so you take
action to avoid that future. It doesn't have to be something after you
die. If you decide not to stroll across the freeway because you have a
bad feeling about getting hit by a truck and so you decide not to
stroll across the freeway you have made a here-and-now decision about
avoiding something - and hence never experiencing it. You are
reasoning about your actions with your feeling (compassion?) as part of
a premise. You're not reasoning *about* your feeling (which I suppose
would be called '3rd person').

Brent Meeker
  If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for
reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
        -- Einstein
Received on Tue Jan 15 2002 - 20:24:20 PST