Scientific Analysis of the Body and the Interaction of Minds

Abstract

The conception of sharing life rests on the assumption that one shares the same physiological and psychological structures with the others. One thinks that beings with similar structures have similar pains, similar pleasures, similar desires, fears, and in general the same formal structure of understanding and will. Organic similarity is easily confirmed: human bodies are sufficiently similar in all macroscopic and microscopic details in every particular part or system. This is how we are able to survive: the same type or quantity of food is nourishing; the same measure of bleeding or of impact is grave, etc. It is only by reckoning the due measures of these goods and evils that one is able to live; one becomes so assured of the utility of these measures as to have no doubts in advising the same to the others. I advise because I am satisfied with my experience when I respect these due measures; and I assume that “the others” advise me to do the same because they are satisfied with their experiences. Hence, there arise universal measures for good and evil. This is a common sense analysis of the origin of values or norms: I and the others presume to know what good life for the human or even for the animal is in general through considerations of similarity. Advices on issues like the nutritiveness of the food or advantageousness of a specific bodily motion refer, of course, only to a primitive form of a common understanding of, or care for the species, and such examples constitute the archetypes of any conceivable counsel. All practical, ethical and aesthetical judgements, imperatives or recommendations aim the improvement of life: one professes to know what is better by one’s own experience and hence one thinks one can, and even ought to advise the means to attain it. No doubt, error and hypocrisy are possible, but error and lie become conceptual possibilities only when their contraries already have assumed meanings. Besides, this cannot be an argument against the idea that all counsel aims at good. The philosophically significant type of advice is veridical, and all ethical counselling is generally taken to be aiming the common good. It seems possible to offer the same argument from a solipsistic perspective too: even