[MD] Proud to be a Brit / Pommie

[Platt Holden]

[Ian]
> So you agree Platt.
> 
> Nazism - bad (latest news, hold the front page)

National socialism bad. Yes.

> Capitalism (any ism with a Kapital letter) - bad
> (Ideology bad)

Ideology not bad. Science is an ideology. MOQ is an ideology.

> Pragmatism - OK in itself (if not abused by ideology)

Pragmatism - Not OK.  Subordinates intellect (truth) to social value. 

> Pragmatism plus a hierarchy of patterns of value, with a dynamic
> (Darwinian) mechanism for "participation" in improving those patterns
> - better.
> Radical pragmatism (or wherever DMB's line if enquiry takes us) -
> maybe even better ?
> 
> We're on a roll.

Rolling down different paths of understanding.

Platt

> On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 3:59 PM, Platt Holden <plattholden at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> I agreed with gav that focussing on the numbers is a mugs game and
> >> misses the real sustainability issues, but I have to take comfort in
> >> the fact that the antidote to capitalism (ideology) is pragmatism (ie
> >> anything but ideology).
> >
> > "But the Metaphysics of Quality states that practicality is a social
> > pattern of good. It is immoral for truth to be subordinated to social
> > values since that is a lower form of evolution devouring a higher one.
> > The idea that satisfaction alone is the test of anything is very
> dangerous,
> > according to the Metaphysics of Quality. There are different kinds of
> > satisfaction and some of them are moral nightmares. The Holocaust
> produced
> > a satisfaction among Nazis. That was quality for them. They considered
> it
> > to be practical. But it was a quality dictated by low level static
> social
> > and biological patterns whose overall purpose was to retard the
> evolution
> > of truth and. Dynamic Quality. James would probably have been horrified
> to
> > find that Nazis could use his pragmatism just as freely as anyone else,
> but
> > Phaedrus didn't see anything that would prevent it. But he thought that
> the
> > Metaphysics of Quality's classification of static patterns of good
> prevents
> > this kind of debasement." (Lila, 29)