For some time now, I’ve been meaning to set down some thoughts in response to Marc Tognotti’s long comment on my posts about the transactional model of conversation, in which asks are countered by bids, resulting in a spread or a workable measure of practical liquidity.

Marc suggested I was too hasty in my refusal of the transactional model, and urged me to look a little more closely at asking and bidding and the joint commitments that underlie even the most finite, fleeting and seemingly self-interested human interactions.

There’s lots to what Marc says, and we might ultimately be saying the same thing. One place I thought my response might take the discussion was to Kant’s distinction of price from dignity in the second section of the Groundwork.

What refers to general human inclinations and needs has a market price; what, even without presupposing a need, conforms with a certain taste, i.e., a delight in the mere purposeless play of the powers of our mind, has a fancy price; but what constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not merely have a relative worth, i.e, a price, but an inner worth, i.e., dignity.

This distinction of relative worth and inner worth, price and dignity, can be applied and extended in a number of useful ways. More on that in the future. Here, I invoke it just to draw a bright line between negotiating a price (or merely asking and bidding) and the dignity of the plural subject to which conversations and other cooperative endeavors commit us. We want conversations that respect not only the dignity of individual persons but also the dignity of the plural first person to which we have jointly committed.

Marc’s comment comes close to the Kantian position in saying that we are already so committed: as Kant argues, the “share” every rational being has in universal legislation requires that each person takes her maxims from the point of view of herself, “but also at the same time of every other” person.

The larger point — maybe this is obvious — is that when acting jointly these basic moral considerations of the respect we owe to each other are of more importance in working out what to do than arriving at a brokered decision about what each wants or is willing to do.

Postscript 3 September 2016: To take a simple example. Lucy and Jo are taking a walk together to the old lighthouse. When they arrive at a fork in the road, Lucy wants to go left, and follow the path that runs along the brook, then cuts back to the cliff where the lighthouse stands. Jo wants to walk along the cliff all the way to the lighthouse. Both routes have much to recommend them, and we could extend the example to imagine their conversation at this juncture. They might debate the merits of each route, the scenic beauty of the cliff route or the quiet shade of the brookside path, but their conversation will involve something other than negotiations of fancy price. (Is Jo dismissive of Lucy’s suggestion? Is Lucy obstinate in her refusal to walk along the cliff? Does one run roughshod over the other? Does Jo agree to Lucy’s route then nurse a resentment for the rest of the walk?) Jo and Lucy have arrived at a moral crossroads: how they conduct themselves in conversation is of greater moral significance than the route they take. It’s not just a question of how they treat one another. It’s a question of the respect they accord to the “us” to which they’ve committed, the first-person-plural cooperating subject that is Jo and Lucy walking together.