On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, dmolnar wrote:
Even so - in math class I am told "if two reasonable people start from the same premises, they should arrive at the same conclusion." In philosophy I find that Frege called a failure to apply the same laws of logic a "new form of madness."
In the ethics course, I am told "we always expect reasonable people to arrive at *different* conclusions."
Odd.
No, it's not at all odd. Your math prof neglected to mention that the two people must also start with the same objectives. (In math, they always assume that people are all motivated to solve the same problem...) Your ethics prof neglected to mention that he assumes people's objectives, or values, differ in some way. If we had a sufficiently advanced model of economics and politics and technical advances, and adequate data, we could sit here and mechanically forecast the next 200 years. That's math. Same premises, same value, same conclusion. But I might find the forecast future horrifying and you might like it. That's ethics; same premises, different values, different conclusions. And the fact is that we don't have that sufficiently advanced model, so even if we accept *some* of the same premises, there are judgement calls and guesses we will make during the forecast that the two of us make differently. These constitute different premises. That's futurism. Different premises, Different values, different conclusions. However, even if we forecast completely different futures, and I see some law as being needed to stop the venusians from stealing our cattle in 2059 and you figure the same law will be needed to prevent banks from enslaving the last surviving mayan tribe under a mountain of debt in 2062, we can get together and work for the passage of that law. That's politics. Some Different premises, Some different values, Some of the same conclusions. Bear