R. Hawkins has written:
"There are "increasingly rationally cooperative ways" that we humans could
live, but in order to get to them I think we need to deal with some of our
embedded, irrationally competitive and combative, group-on-group evolutionary
baggage."
---
This reminds me, yes, you guessed right: Grice. In his earliest "Logic and
Conversation" (Oxford, 1965) he speaks of a balance between self-love
('conversational self-love' even!) and benevolence ('conversational
benevolence') even, which he later subsumed under his famous "Cooperative
Principle" (William James Lectures, 1967). At this point, he wants to know what
we mean, 'cooperate'. Do we mean 'help'? He wonders in a note: "Does helpfulness
in something we are doing together" equate to 'cooperation'?
In the earlier lectures, Grice argues that 'conversational maxims' (as it
were) are constantly to be weighed against two fundamental and sometimes
competitive demands. Conversational moves should be aimed towards the agreed
current purposes of this 'principle of Conversational Benevolence'. The
'principle of Conversational Self-Love ensures the assumption on the part of
co-agents that neither will go to unnecessary trouble in framing their moves).
I always found the topic fascinating, and trace it to research by J. O.
Urmson and others on Prichard's influential debate on duty and interest, even!
Grice was enough of a rationalist to think that, again to quote from the
earlier lectures, co-agents exhibit a 'certain' degree of helpfulness from
others (usually on the understanding that such helpfulness does not get in the
way of particular goals. An account of the specific type of helpfulness expected
in conversation SHOULD be capable of extension to any collaborative activity.
And so on.
For the historical record, then!
Hawkins:
"some of our embedded, irrationally competitive and combative,
group-on-group evolutionary baggage." I think some of this problem is tackled by
so-called 'dialogue ethicists' (like Habermas, and Apel), in the "Continental"
rather than the Anglo-American tradition?
Cheers,
Speranza
Refs.:
Grice, Conversation: The Oxford Lectures.
Grice, Conversation: The Oxford Lectures.
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