Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.94.961009183833.22340N-100000@acy1.digex.net> Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 18:50:28 -0400 From: Tu and Bob Myers <mailto:tuandbob@ACY.DIGEX.NET> Subject: Re: Tech & Values To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Thanks Kerry,I admit I'm more than "a leetle mite" confused about the enclosed message.
My metaphysicalness musta phyzzeled.
Guess I must meta physical mess I can't handle.
Bob? (I think it's me - I think it's I, not sure of which I are) (However I believe IR**2 =P)
On Wed, 9 Oct 1996, kerry miller wrote:
> Tom:
> > It would be interesting to raise this conference to a more metaphysical
> > level; but, alas, I see no great outcry to discuss these types of
> > underpinnings.
> ...
>
> >
> > regardless of the value judgement, the technolgies and the humans are not
> > separable either as the creators or the recipients
> >
>
> Tom, your radical relativism is great to see, but I expect you'll find
> its a bit much for this list to take in all at once - you'll have to go
> more slowly over some of the intervening steps, e.g.
> that 'who can say' is a rhetorical device obscuring the fact that the
> people who are themselves involved are the ones who _do_ say, and act;
> that, conversely, people who are not themselves involved shouldn't
> interfere with decisions that have been made, but only work towards
> subsequent ones;
> that, in general, 'objectivity' leads to just the kind of confusion
> of is and ought (past and future), that results in the 'quantification,' if
> you will, of acts into bins of goodness and badness;
> that therefore, 'value judgements' cannot be the basis of action *on
> someone elses' behalf*, despite all the talk about inalienable human rights.
>
> Imo, it is just these kinds of underpinnings that discussion here needs
> to scrutinize - and assimilate - so that more mundane questions of where
> to find hospital beds don't have to keep getting raked over the coals.
>
> ========
> Re your comment about history and sustainability:
> "Very few things happen at the right time and the rest do not happen
> at all. The conscientious historian will correct these
> defects." --Herodotus
>
>
> kerry
>