Been waiting to chime in on this thread for awhile..I have to hand it to you, Richard. Five books! On THIS kind of stuff! I hope you'll forgive me, but I'm wondering what's new about this sort of slant. The question you ask in the last paragraph regarding whether collecting ffmiles is "the most valuable" way to earn status, security, etc. really just begs the larger question, pointed out already, about how such determinations of value are to be legitimated. What has intrinsic value? Nothing, of course. That's not to say that all things have equally NO value, only that they have the value ascribed to them.

The question of the "intrinsic good" of a practice is already a hot topic in Aristotle's time, and in recent times Alisdair MacINtyre takes up the question in "After Virtue" in his discussion of internal vs. external goods.

Perhaps I've judged prematurely (I haven't read your books). If you haven't already, let me encourage you to take up the question of the ascription of value, and how those ascriptions are justified. Fascinating subject. As for your comment:

Sometimes it's interesting to consider if we have unconscious motivations that conflict with what we consciously strive for...

Well, sure it is, and no doubt we all do (you, too). But that's a dangerous game. It's often used to discredit the things people say and believe about themselves in favor of some expert's opinion of what's really making them tick.

What is almost never considered is: what could be the motivation for looking for a person's unconscious motivations, and then holding those to be somehow more primary or important than their conscious ones?

I've never heard a good answer to that one.

[This message has been edited by bryan at webflyer (edited 06-08-1999).]