Back to Kant

Justin Walsh jwalsh at bigpond.net.au
Tue Oct 16 22:19:24 UTC 2001


Yes Gary! Most certainly.
And Joe and his family also have the right to exit an expressway without
another Joe coming down the entry lane and wiping out his family, or some
other Joe flying in his office window.
It is called protocol. Without which we would have no communication at all,
no web, no civilisation, no humanity, not even a Squeak. Even animals and
plants have it. It is what Smalltalk is all about.
The discussion is really about the best protocol for each and every
situation in any public space.
It is your right to pee in your own bathwater and then drink it, if that is
what you really "want".
Joe the box, doing whatever he wants, when he wants, how he wants, is a
crass distortion of the concept "freedom".
Freedom has nothing to do with wants (desires). It has everthing to do with
"necessity" or law: the glue that binds "cause to necessity". The concept
that Kant was driven to defend.
Baruch Spinoza said that "freedom is the recognition of necessity".
If we can turn necessity (needs) into wants instead of wants into needs then
we will all be a lot safer.
Following  "desire" we satisfy wants following "design" we satify needs:
sorry! design wins.
regards
Justin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary McGovern" <garywork at lineone.net>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 1:14 AM
Subject: Re: Back to Kant


>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Alan Kay" <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org>
> To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> Sent: Friday, October 12, 2001 1:10 PM
> Subject: Re: Back to Kant
>
>
> > Ken --
> >
> > At 11:37 AM -0700 10/11/01, Ken Kahn wrote:
> > >Philosophy intersects programming languages at least in two places:
> > >
> > >1. A language designer is designing a world with an ontology and
> > >episptomology. I think this is what Alan mean by Smalltalk being too
> > >Platonic. Think about the different world views inherent in a class
based
> > >OOPL than in a prototype based one.
>
> > This was exactly the sense of my remark.
>
> That isn't how I understood that remark at all, I understood it to mean
that
> objects were too dependent on the hierarchy and the system. And ideally
that
> objects should have 'rights to freedom' and not just be imprisoned within
> the system they were created in.
>
> Shouldn't Joe the box have rights to travel to the system of his choice,
the
> and to talk to objects of his choice ?
>
> Regards,
> Gary
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Spinoza_-_Search_Results_-_Encarta_=AE_Online_Concise_-_Yo?=
	=?iso-8859-1?Q?ur_free_guide_for_quick_answers..url?=
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20011017/02f957c2/iso-8859-1QSpinoza_-_Search_Results_-_Encarta_AE_Online_Concise_-_Yoiso-8859-1Qur_free_guide_for_quick_answers..obj


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list