From: "Lucy" 


I am not responding to your posting per se which is not terribly accessible.
I visited your web site at  http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/dada/90/
and found it most fascinating. On a first, rapid reading I detected no
obvious internal inconsistencies. I will be fascinated to watch and see
whether this thread is followed and debated by some of the more interesting
minds in this group. Thanks for the insights,
Lucy

"Phil Roberts, Jr."  wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Although I've read some of Kant's Critique, and all of the Cambridge
 Companion
> to Kant, I'm still not quite certain as to how he arrives at his
 categorical
> imperative.  But I believe I know a much faster route which someone here
> might wish to challenge me on.
>
> Rather than assuming that 'being rational' (in
 valuative/strategic/practical
> affairs) is a matter of 'being efficient' (means/end theory) or of
> 'maximizing self-interest' (egoism), abandon the self-interest assumption
> and simply assume that 'being rational' is simply a matter of 'being able
> to "see" what is going on' or 'being objective'.  If such were the case,
> then you could justify a valuative version of the imperative, i.e., 'Love
> your neighbor as you love yourself' by bringing the mountain to Mohammed
> so to speak, in that 'being rational' would be equivalent to 'being
> valuatively objective'.
>
> The justification for the "theory" of rationality I am proposing here
> would simply lie in its superior epistemic credentials, not only in its
> greater freedom from contradiction, but also in terms of its ability to
> "explain" several evolutioanry anomalies (the presence of morality and
> emotional instability in homo sapiens).
>
>
> --
>
>                   Phil Roberts, Jr.
>
>        The Psychodynamics of Genetic Indeterminism:
> Why We Turned Out Like Captain Kirk Instead of Mr. Spock
>      http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/dada/90/