Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

meaning here — (top-down).

We make a value judgement immediately in receiving a sensation. Moral and aesthetic rules are very much later in this process, when we attempt to go from ‘image’ (our personal impressions of our experiences and how we acted on them) to symbol — where we try to relate this to other people. The message from this conflicted stance of partly acknowledging our contradictions and partly denying them is that the meaning, values and purposes that might offer a real alternative cannot spring from a scientific, coolly rational view of the universe, or from a detached and pragmatic philosophy.

We tell ourselves we are ‘rational actors’, that we take the common-sense view. This might, at one time, just have been a matter of shaking our heads at the folly of human nature. We might just happily observe the way the stories we tell ourselves develop and change over time — ‘live and let live’ seems like a reasonable and tolerant approach. But as we have gained technical know-how, the stakes have got much higher. We might feel an urgent need to change the story — or some part of it. We might feel that now the dominant narratives are taking on ominous consequences.

All these things seem like contenders for a cure — we prefer a good story to the facts, we derive many values from instinct rather than rationality, we act on impulse rather than sensible moral precepts, we are victims of the abuses of power. But maybe it is better to accept that — as humans — this is who we are and try to make do with what we’ve got.

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