[MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[John Carl]

dmb,



On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 7:48 PM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Is it pragmatic to mythologize an absolute?
>
> No, certainly not.



Jc:  Let's divide this question up into two different aspects - the social
vs. the intellectual/individual.  Now at the individual/intellectual level,
I agree with you.  Or rather, see what you mean.  Personally speaking,
there are many different answers because people are coming from different
backgrounds and have different needs.

But on the societal level - where mass-information-control is what keeps
the industrial wheels turning, you've got to have some common myths.
Re-ligere is "re-tying" Human communities have always been tied to their
myths.  I think you can replace an old and dying myth, with a brand new one
- but what you can't do, is throw out the old and offer NOTHING in its
place (sorry Marsha) And I think its that very nihilism which creates the
dogmatic reactions that Baggini is describing in his article.

So I ask again, is it pragmatic to mythologize an absolute?  Absolute, not
in the mathematical sense of logically pristine but in the manner of a
rhetorical question - searching for intersubjective agreement that we
attain when we deem something "objectively true".  Marx famously quoted
religion as the opiate of the masses. But so what?   Evidently, people need
their drugs, in order to cope with the madness of 21st century life.  If
you think its wise to deprive them, explain why.


dmb:



> The purpose of pragmatism is to distinguish real questions and real
> problems from meaningless metaphysical disputes.


Jc:  smile.  This is what Peirce and Royce tried to explain to James - in
the realm of logic and "high country of the mind" abstract problems are
real problems.  By the rules of Realism, anyway, which James followed.

dmb:

Similarly, James' radical empiricism is built to keep out all such
> metaphysical fictions.



Jc:  It's a convenient epithet for person uncomfortable with mountain
climbing.

dmb:


> In fact, pragmatism is an alternative theory of truth, one that is meant
> to replace the notions of Truth as objective, singular, eternal, absolute,
> etc.. In terms of practical effects, the belief in such things is
> inconsequential or even negative.



Jc:  YOU, mr. buchanan, are exactly who Baggini is aiming at.  You're so
proud of being absolutely free, that you've trapped yourself in a very
tight box indeed.  Destined to be battered by other boxes in boxing matches
that never can be won or lost.  What you're trying to evade, is what has
got you boxed.

The practical effect of a community that believes in absolute truth, is a
community that succeeds as a modern economy.   You absolutize your own
beliefs, in the very act of de-absolutizing all others!  You can't evade
the paradox, any more than James could.  If the student who does not
surpass the master, the master is a failure.

dmb:

For James, we can decide what to believe based on our passions, our
> feelings, but only in very special circumstances, when a decision must be
> made but cannot be decided on the basis of evidence. This ethical dimension
> of belief is almost universally recognized; math and logic guys like
> Bertrand Russell agree with Buddha and the Dali Lama that it is unethical
> or even taboo to believe without evidence.
>
>
> And that's why it totally matters whether there is any absolute truth or
> not, why we can not just believe it because we have a thirst and wish it
> were true.



Jc:  But the thirst and wish themselves, are what we experience - are the
absolute that we hold in common that creates our conceptual schemes.  Sure,
intuition and passion and feeling all go into that.

dmb:


> And if the argument is right, that absolute or objective truth is an
> incoherent idea that is impossible to ever verify or cash out, and you just
> decide to believe it anyway,.. well then I guess you don't really care
> about truth after all.



Jc:  What I don't see, is how you can make any claims about caring about
truth, when truth is just a feeling, according to you.

Truth is an  ideal and when it's more than merely relative, laws work,
courts work and society works.  That is absolutizing truth, as I see it.
But maybe I should use a different word.  Maybe Royce should have used a
different word.  Philosophology has it's influence.  We tend to talk in the
terms we read.

Pirsig's main critique of the term "absolute" was its connotation, which is
not a logical problem but a rhetorical one and yet completely valid for the
artist to say how he wants his painting to look.

 The dictionary definition of the term implies a stand-alone thing -
something non-relative.  Well, I can't buy that either because everything
that is, is by virtue of its relations.  Nothing stands alone and apart,
and certainly not truth - that's just asinine, as Pirsig said of the law of
gravity, in ZAMM.

But  don't think you can simply and blithely do away with a term, and by
doing so you have solved a problem.  That's the worst kind of
abstractionism.


dmb:



> Like Pirsig says, empirical reality keeps us from fooling ourselves, keeps
> us honest. That's where beliefs are tested, where they're made into truth
> or falsity. And that's what we can never do with metaphysical posits like
> the Will or the Absolute. Like I said, the whole idea is epistemologically
> impossible. It's like basing all the currency on the gold standard even
> though no actually gold has ever been seen by anyone by only logically
> inferred from the need for such standards. It's simply too incoherent to be
> taken seriously.
>
>
>
> Quality isn't like that. The term refers to direct experience. You don't
> have to believe in it or prop it up into a metaphysical chess piece.
>
>
>

Jc:  I don't have to get drunk or pick up bar ladies, neither.  We're not
here because we HAVE to do metaphysics.  But imho, the purpose of
philosophy is society - we dissect and pick apart the underlying conceptual
schemes of society and try to think up something better.  Truth is
intellectual betterness and betterness has its relative aspects and its
absolute aspects.  You can always do better, no matter how well you do.


Altho I am feeling like now I have to go get drunk.  Just a feeling, tho.
It's not the truth.

John