tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11422779.post-1130373636246977922005-10-26T20:33:00.000-04:002005-10-28T10:34:56.640-04:00<em>If I were him, I would have acted differently. If I were her, I would never have chosen to do that. </em><br /><br />This is the essential thought process by which we judge others.<br /><br />Yet surely if you were him or her, then “you” would no longer be you. Unless you’re a member of the Holy Trinity, you don’t get to be more than one person at a time.<br /><br />Because you assume that if <em>you </em>were in the other person’s place, <em>you</em> would act differently; or that <em>you</em> would never have gotten yourself into that position to begin with and, therefore, this other person must also have been able to act differently – well, we’re just not reasoning correctly when we think along such lines.<br /><br />All we’re really saying is that <em>we </em> would never have done such-and-such under any circumstances. And we may not even really know that much.<br /><br />We can’t plausibly make ourselves the measure of others.Paulnoreply@blogger.com