completely unsupported assertions
or, where my head is at the moment.
i think levinas has it right to make something like interiority (and the radical exteriority/alterity for which it opens the way) the primary ethical determinant--even, nay, especially if we throw out the bit about it being uniquely human. it seems to me that totality and infinity still works if we say what he calls "interiority" is more or less what it is to exist as a mind among other minds. so what is a mind? this is admittedly rather fuzzy conceptually, but i think that's a good thing. there are probably several ways to exist as a mind, which might be/look rather different from one another, be easier or harder to identify as minds. one of the easier ones is to identify oneself as a mind. but, perhaps inconveniently, this is far from the only way.
the question "what is a mind?" matters because minds need to be able to identify other minds as minds, and this because minds have certain ethical obligations to other minds. what are these obligations? minimally: recognition, which is, of course, not so minimal. to recognize another mind is to care for it, converse with it if possible--work with it to build a world. i think the task is that simple, that enormous. it calls for all our powers and means thinking all that a world is, means, entails.
the imperative is not to keep everyone alive--except insofar as that is (now no longer useful or very apt) shorthand for making it possible for everyone to keep existing as minds.
i think levinas has it right to make something like interiority (and the radical exteriority/alterity for which it opens the way) the primary ethical determinant--even, nay, especially if we throw out the bit about it being uniquely human. it seems to me that totality and infinity still works if we say what he calls "interiority" is more or less what it is to exist as a mind among other minds. so what is a mind? this is admittedly rather fuzzy conceptually, but i think that's a good thing. there are probably several ways to exist as a mind, which might be/look rather different from one another, be easier or harder to identify as minds. one of the easier ones is to identify oneself as a mind. but, perhaps inconveniently, this is far from the only way.
the question "what is a mind?" matters because minds need to be able to identify other minds as minds, and this because minds have certain ethical obligations to other minds. what are these obligations? minimally: recognition, which is, of course, not so minimal. to recognize another mind is to care for it, converse with it if possible--work with it to build a world. i think the task is that simple, that enormous. it calls for all our powers and means thinking all that a world is, means, entails.
the imperative is not to keep everyone alive--except insofar as that is (now no longer useful or very apt) shorthand for making it possible for everyone to keep existing as minds.