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

Dan Glover daneglover at gmail.com
Mon Jun 8 23:25:26 PDT 2015


>From  This is what the clash of civilisations is really about by Julian Baggini

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/apr/14/comment.comment3?CMP=share_btn_link]

"I don't usually consider either the Ministry of Defence or the
Vatican to be prescient founts of wisdom. But when two such different
oracles issue remarkably similar warnings, you have to take notice.
Earlier this week it was revealed in this newspaper how the MoD
believes that "the trend towards moral relativism and increasingly
pragmatic values" was causing more and more people to seek "more rigid
belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire
political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism". Flash back to
2004 and you find Pope John Paul II encouraging the then Cardinal
Ratzinger to challenge a world "marked by both a widespread relativism
and the tendency to a facile pragmaticism" by boldly proclaiming the
truth of the church. Ratzinger has been preaching about the dangers of
relativism ever since."

Dan:
Somehow this doesn't seem quite right... how he lumps moral relativism
and pragmatism into one group. But being as I am not a philosophy
major and that I spend most all my time making up stories in my head,
I thought I should look into this a bit before commenting.

pragmatism: a reasonable and logical way of doing things or of
thinking about problems that is based on dealing with specific
situations instead of on ideas and theories.
[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pragmatism]

Ah. That seems pretty straightforward. Why would anyone object to
using pragmatism in political situations? I don't know. Wait. There's
more. What's this about facile pragmatism?

facile: too simple : not showing enough thought or effort.

Hmmm. Is there really such an animal? Isn't pragmatic thinking the
result of specificity? Of dealing with empirical data rather than
imaginary scenarios that might or might not play out as anticipated?

relativism: : the belief that different things are true, right, etc.,
for different people or at different times.
[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/relativism]

This seems the antithesis of pragmatism, which deals in specific
situations, not in the idea that those situations are relative to
different people and different times.

Any thoughts on this ambiguity? Am I simply reading things wrongly here?

Thanks,

Dan

http://www.danglover.com

On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 10:06 AM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> John Carl said to dmb:
>
> Is it pragmatic to mythologize an absolute? ...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.
>
>
> Dan replied:
>
> ...to conflate the individual with the intellect is a mistake, at least according to the MOQ. We as individuals are made up of all four levels, not only intellect.  Now, to the many different answers... sure, that's quite possible. Yet you seem to be suggesting all answers are somehow equal. I disagree. Some are better than others. Just because we each have differing personal histories doesn't necessarily place us on equal footing so far as intellectualizing goes.
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> I'd like to discuss the problem described in Baggini's article because pragmatism is just what the doctor ordered. It is not relativism and it is not Absolutism. Pragmatism does not say that all answers are valid and it does not say there is only one right answer. I'd like to discuss this but it's quite clear that John doesn't understand the meaning of these terms. The opening question, for example, asks if it's pragmatic to adopt an Absolute. Given the meaning of the terms, that question is an absurd contradiction. That's like asking if it's pragmatic to reject pragmatism. John's conflation of individualism and intellectual values shows that he misunderstands both the MOQ's 4th level and the pragmatist's views of the nature of the self as embodied and socially situated.
>
>
> All of his comments are riddled with these kinds confusions, conflations, misunderstandings - - and I get the distinct impression that John simply doesn't give a shit what the truth of the matter is. So I did not bother to reply. Since there no good reason to think John is able or willing to discuss this stuff, I'm not going to waste any more time trying.
>
>
> But I think Baggini presents an important problem and he's certainly not the only to bring it up. If somebody else wants to get into it, I'm interested.
>
>



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