Re: virus: MaSturbation and Kant

Tadeusz Niwinski (tad@teta.ai)
Mon, 15 Sep 1997 16:19:22 -0700

Eva wrote:
>On Sun, 14 Sep 1997, Tadeusz Niwinski wrote:
>> KMO wrote:
>> >You are not likely to extract more than a small fraction of the meaning
>> >of the foregoing paragraph on your first reading.
>>
>> Is this an example of a "good will" towards your opponent?
>
>Tad, I don't think Kevin was being insulting here, I think he was
>indicating that the implications of the paragraph were fairly involved.
>I generally find that assuming good will on the part of other people in an
>argument serves me better than other assumptions.

Eva, I agree, assuming good will is a good strategy. This was more about
Kant than Kevin. Kant discards knowledge and "everything else" except "good
will". I think "good will" is a very vague concept and I was using the
closest example available. Would you consider the "you are not likely..."
statement as "good will"? (In a series of posts Kevin has shown quite a bit
of hostility towards Nathaniel, who -- as you suggest -- pretended not to
notice it, creating a marvelous example of how well your strategy works).
Was what Kevin was doing Kantian "good will" ?

Because you like Kevin (I like him too) we can go for it in this case. What
if you hate someone? Than the "good will" principle is more difficult to
use. Kant is using somethig very much related to out emotions as "the only"
valid way of judging reality (and I *hate* him for that :-)).

Regards, Tadeusz (Tad) Niwinski from planet TeTa
tad@teta.ai http://www.teta.ai (604) 985-4159