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FOR EVERYONE

RATIONAL-ETHICAL LIVING AND THE EMERGENCE OF “HOMO RATIONALIS”

The Most Important Book 

BY

WILLIAM V. VAN FLEET, M.D.

5/19/2006

                                        TABLE OF CONTENTS

 Note to reader: 

Much attention has been devoted to using terms in this book in highly consistent ways. I request that the reader read this book in the order written, to prevent the misunderstandings that so frequently arise by virtue of the use of the same words with different meanings. Doing so will assure that the value of this book will be preserved. 

William V. Van Fleet, M.D.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have benefited from all of the thinkers of the world, who are too numerous to count, and attempting to list some of them would do injustice to so many others that I prefer not to do so. There are two exceptions, however, individuals I have known personally in recent years, both of whom have died recently. 

I wish to acknowledge my debt to Leo Glanzman, who for many years had been the leader of the Philosophy Discussion Group at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Charlotte, North Carolina. He fostered in that group an atmosphere that I have found nowhere else, namely, one in which all of a person’s ideas will be maximally challenged. In such an atmosphere, the few who can tolerate it do indeed gain an enormous perspective with regard to the difficulty of constructing concepts, theories, and beliefs that stand up to rational scrutiny. I believe that it is in such an atmosphere that one’s ideas can become increasingly clear and communicable, and that it is in such an atmosphere that new ideas that will be helpful to our species are very likely to arise. 

I also wish to acknowledge my debt to Jess Riley, who attended Leo’s group for many years, and who contributed two concepts that probably came into my thinking primarily from him. One was his concept that achieving “adequacy of the model” was considered by some to be a better goal than achieving (illusive) “truth.” The other was his own (to my knowledge) concept of a more ideal method of representation for world government, based upon principles upon which we could probably all agree. 

In general, I wish to acknowledge my debt to the persons who have read and provided feedback regarding the drafts of my developing book and/or have engaged in friendly debate with me regarding the concepts therein, such feedback thus enabling me to clarify and extend the ideas. 

I wish also to acknowledge my debt to Joyce Anderson, who for a time contributed so much to freeing me from the burden of day-to-day details of living so that I might devote more time to the writing of the book, who provided me with so much encouragement in the writing of the book, who helped me so much in setting up seminars and doing other things related to the development of the book, and who showed me so clearly how thoughtful we may be of others. 

William V. Van Fleet, M.D. 

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