Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

difference between equality and equity. Equality is often visually obvious, but equity takes a lot of discussion and a lot of working out. Many of our problems as people stem from this division between instinctive drives (adopted as values) and rational values. It’s good to know and understand both — even if just to understand ourselves a bit better. The descriptions of human fickleness that opened this chapter are mostly a reflection of this contrast between instinctual drives and rational principles.

This is why ‘innate’ is such a difficult word — and likewise the related term — intuition. We might, for instance, have an intuitive grasp of moral precepts that come to us from outside the universe. Or we might have an intuitive grasp of moral precepts that are built into the universe. Or we may use the word ‘intuition’ to refer to those values that have their origins in our instinctual drives from our evolutionary past. The problem with value being innate, and going back to our initial discussions of Kant — is that then there seems to be no motivation for us to change our behaviour. We seem to have abstract values in order to act rationally. But, I’d tentatively suggest, if we’re going to use the word intuition then we might be better served by using it to refer to what society and culture are trying to tell us — as well as the natural world around us. We are more than just a collection of individuals — and an eco-system is more than just the plants and animals it contains. Something emerges from our great conglomerations of life and consciousness — something with more wisdom than we might muster by individual effort. So, I’d go as far as saying that there’s value out there, but she does

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