In a message dated 10/10/99 10:26:23 PM Pacific Daylight Time, patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au writes:
> > to follow this path of inquiry a little more, is it not lead-pipe
blunt
> > honesty to openly treat people as objects to be manipulated? and how,
> > exactly, is 'treating people as other living beings like oneself'
> > incompatible with 'treating people as objects to be manipulated'?
[lightbulb: i manipulate myself on a regular basis. or do i? ;) -- sayke]
>
> What's honest about it? You either treat people as objects
> or you don't. Some people do some people don't. I am not
> even sure choice comes into to a large degree.
and the debate sinks into the dank, dark, and necassary swamp of redefinition. whats an object, as opposed to a person, and what does it mean to treat people as objects as opposed to, well, people? is the difference in the attribution of significance; in the attribution of some kind of subjective/intrinsic value (im using that term way too much) to something outside oneself?
if so, i would call it intellectually honest to deem such attribution irrational. if you disagree, im sure youll elaborate. ;)
> The way you describe yourself does make you sound like you
> would be classified as having one or another of the personality
> disorders as defined by DSM-IV. Of course Aspergis (high-
> functioning autistics) also tend to treat people as if they
> were objects.
fascinating. what other methods are there to find out if theres anything truly different going on here, short of, say, an mri peek at the corpus callosum? i seem to remember something about mri peeks at corpus callosums being relevent to this discussion, but i dont remember how, exactly. im tired. but im not autistic...
> Its a logical falicy to believe that acting in one's own
> interests also implies that you must treat other's as
> objects to be manipulated.
interisting. i thought of them as equivalent... but i suppose we could mean different things by "treating people as objects". shit, im not getting this. since when are people not objects? i mean, perceptions are things, and things are objects, and people are perceptions... the resulting venn diagram would show that at least some people are objects... im rambling. goodnight.
sayke, v2.3.05