Abstract

We will start with a fable—There was once a creator who wanted to create free beings.The other creators, it seems, didn't share this ambition, indeed they thought his project was philosophically confused. They were well satisfied with their own worlds. But our creator (we will call him C) sat down to work it out.‘How will you even start?’ asked his friend D, the Doubter.‘Well, I know what I won't do’, answered C. ‘I won't just give them an empty faculty named Desire, and tell them to invent values and want what they choose. Unless they want something definite for a start, they won't even be able to start choosing.’‘Exactly’, said D.‘So what I think I must do,’ C went on, ‘is to give them a lot of desires which conflict, and make them bright enough to see they have got to do something about it.’