Subject: BHA: RE: Ontology of War
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 15:34:20 +1200
From: "Radha D'Souza" <rdsouza-AT-waikato.ac.nz>



I apologise for not responding to this sooner.
I think the point was not about the glass being half full or half empty
- that would be a quantitative approach. Rather, the point was to assess
what type of liquid does the glass hold - is it capable of curing my
illness or will it make me more sick?
Radha

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
[mailto:owner-bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU] On Behalf Of James
Daly
Sent: Monday, 6 September 2004 10:47 p.m.
To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: BHA: Ontology of War

Could this be considered a contribution to the topic?


There are two ways of looking at a glass containing water. It can be
seen as
half-empty or as half-full. There are also two ways of looking at human
relations. They can be seen as for the most part essentially aggressive,
competitive and mistrustful, even if in actual fact not totally so; or
they
can be seen as, in principle, essentially cooperative and caring, though
in
actual fact not totally so. The first way is reductionist, alleging that
at
base human behaviour is bad, any improvement (measured in utility) being
due
to acceptance of that base level, and the use in civilising social
engineering of stick and carrot. The second is idealist, seeing the
ideal of
human relations as their reality, and failure to live up to the norm as
a
fall, a falling short. These two views of human relations are
essentially in
potentially violent conflict.
This was clear in the conflict between the Sophists on the one hand
and Socrates, Plato and Aristotle on the other.
James Daly




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