Sam Bostaph wrote: >----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- >I think this whole discussion would benefit with >a complete absence of "anthropomorphizing." In >THE DIFFERENCE OF MAN AND THE DIFFERENCE IT >MAKES, Mortimer Adler pointed out quite a few >decades ago that the human capacity for >conceptual thought is not shared with other >animals and is the distinctive mark of a human >being. All of the outer manifestations of >animal behavior do not constitute a basis for >using words that designate human acts for other animal acts. There is, without reasonable doubt, a decisive break between man and the other animals. However, this difference exists within a continuity with the animals. I would recommend Alasdair MacIntyre's Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues. Even our differences have roots in the rest of the animal kingdom; even our rationality, even our spirituality, has a material base. Such a view, I believe, saves us from either an excessive idealism or an excessive empiricism. In relation to the title, if MacIntyre is right that homo sapiens needs the virtues, then so does homo oeconomicus. John C. M?daille