[lit-ideas] Amago's "Bessie the Cow" -- and Extrinsic Valuing
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 22:51:42 EDT
In a message dated 8/30/2004 12:06:37 AM Eastern Standard Time,
aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
The short answer is that most people cannot stand to eat anything that had
a purpose that was different from "food". I can't eat my cat because he's a
cool dude. I don' t want to eat my dog because he's fun. I don't have a
relationship with Bessie the cow. She's for eatin'.
----
This is what Heidegger called a fallacious functional explanation of the cow
(his example was the chair -- "it's for seatin'").
In "The Conception of Value", Oxford philosopher H. P. Grice considers the
issue at some length. He concludes that there is an essence that _things_ have
(his example is the "tiger"). A tiger, Grice says, essentially _tigers_. A
cow, mutatis mutandi, _cows_.
To conclude "A cow is for the eatin'" involves what Grice calls "extrinsic
valuing". The agent (Amago) is projecting on the thing-to-be-valued a value
which is _not_ intrinsic to the thing (if a thing it is). This type of
extrinsic
valuing is usually fallacious.
Note that there is the implicit epithet that Bessie is _not_ a milk cow,
since milk cows are _not_ for eatin', and essentially every cow has a right to
be a milk cow (unlike bulls).
In sum, it is not easy to demonstrate that for any x, the purpose of x is
"food", as Amago writes. "Food" is in the feeding, and it's the Feeder
(self-feeder) who or what decides what's food or not. Extrinsic value _par
excellence_.
Cheers,
JL
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