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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Robert Merrihew Adams

Omniscience and manipulation

09 Wednesday Dec 2009

Posted by Amod Lele in Certainty and Doubt, Christianity, Deity, Early and Theravāda, Honesty, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Morality, Truth

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, Andrew Moon, emotivism, Immanuel Kant, Madhyamaka, Pali suttas, Robert Merrihew Adams, Śāntideva, upāyakauśalya

Andrew Moon of the Prosblogion (probably the leading blog in the philosophy of Abrahamic traditions) was recently rereading Robert Adams’s The Virtue of Faith, and was intrigued by a passage that I also found intriguing. Adams is arguing that uncertainty is a central part of a good personal relationship:

Well, suppose we always saw what people were like, and particularly what they would do in any situation in which we might have to do with them. How would we relate to people if we had such knowledge of them? I think we would manipulate them. I do not mean that we would necessarily treat people in a selfish or immoral way, but I think we could not help having an attitude of control toward them. And I think the necessity we would be under, to have such an attitude, would be conceptual and not merely causal. If I pursued my own ends in relation to you, knowing exactly how you would respond to every move, I would be manipulating you as much as I manipulate a typewriter or any other inanimate object. Continue reading →

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