Gary F., List: Gf: Now I’m seeing the limitations of your hypothesis that ALL human endeavor is rooted in dissatisfaction. It seems to ignore more positive motivations such as curiosity, participation and playfulness in all its forms. The quest for knowledge can be much more than an escape from a state of dissatisfaction.
Although I mainly had in mind the irritation of (genuine) doubt, it seems to me that curiosity, participation, and playfulness can all be understood as forms of dissatisfaction. The quest for knowledge would cease altogether if everyone were truly satisfied with the current state of their knowledge. Gf: But discovery of principles *in nature* — including the nature of conscious purposes as a specialized subset of final causes, or natural purposes — is, for any philosopher, ethically privileged over manipulation of any kind, because self-control depends on it. I am not sure that I follow this. How does self-control depend on the discovery of principles in nature? Where and how do we draw the line between what is "natural" and what is "artificial"--i.e., the result of human manipulation? Why should "natural" purposes always be "ethically privileged" over human purposes? Gf: The status of engineering as a *profession* (as opposed to a *discipline*) is a sociological issue, and I wasn’t trying to say anything about that. There’s nothing in the nature of the *discipline* that stops a professional engineer (or a client, or a manager!) from taking a scientific or philosophical approach to the matter at hand. Understood, I was just prompted by your comment to point out an often-overlooked aspect of engineering practice. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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