About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

18 J. Value Inquiry 3 (1984)

handle is hein.journals/jrnlvi18 and id is 1 raw text is: J. Value Inquiry 18:3-12 (1984). © 1984 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague. Printed in the Netherlands. Articles ON KNOWING ANOTHER PERSON MRINAL MIRI North-Eastern Hill University, India The claim is frequently made now-a-days that the sciences of man cannot be value neutral, that any genuine knowledge of man and society cannot be free from a commitment to values. And this cannot expresses not just an empirical impos- sibility, but an impossibility of a somewhat stronger sort. There are several, more or less related, routes to this position. In this paper I wish to consider the rather limited issue of my knowledge of another person, and see if there is a philosophical route to such a position at least on this issue. It will be natural to assume that we shall be able to learn lessons concerning the general problem from this particular exploration. I am not, for the purpose of this paper, interested in the classical problem of scepticism about other minds. In connexion with this problem I merely reiterate the position, so convincingly argued for by several philosophers,' that insofar as one is at all in possession of the knowledge that one is a self-conscious creature, one must, for that very reason, also be in possession of the knowledge that there are other self-conscious creatures as well. My problem in this paper is rather, what I might call, the real life problem of the accuracy and justice of one's claim to know another person. My use of the word justice here is deliberate. It is meant to encompass two points, namely, (i) the point that any claim to know another person must be just in the sense of its being justifiable; and (ii) the point that any such claim must be capable of being seen as doing justice to the person who is the object of the knowl- edge claim. I shall argue that the two senses of justice here are interlinked; and to show that this is so is also to have shown that my knowledge of another person is embedded in a commitment to values. In his brilliant, though somewhat neglected, paper, entitled, Freedom and Re- sentment,2 Strawson makes a distinction which I find very useful for my purpose in this paper. This is the distinction which he makes between an objective at- titude and a reactive or participatory attitude in one's relationship with other human beings. I present the distinction, as far as possible, in Strawson's own words. 3

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most