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

[david]

Ron said to John:

... All I was trying to playfully point out is that by virtue of considering ALL ideas equally and sifting through them with a critical eye, you are going to have to deal with the assholes pranksters fools and the simple minded. You know, morons.


dmb says:

Right, considering ALL ideas to be equally valid is the worst kind of sophomoric relativism. That view is actually a straw man version of relativism because that's something that only a teenager could believe, an actual sophomore or freshman. Even Richard Rorty, who's kinda infamous for being a relativist himself, used to complain about simplistic relativism of his undergrad students. Even worse, John is using this extreme view, this vacuous relativism, to defend the legitimacy of the opposite exterme: Absolutism. 


It seems this relativism is one of the consequences of misconstruing the social-intellectual conflict as the conflict between society and the individual. But that's not what Pragmatism or the MOQ says. That's what lots of 18th century thinkers said, what Ayn Rand and lots of free-market conservatives say but not Pirsig. We are social creatures all the way down. Just like our primate cousins live today, we have lived in groups together since before we were human. The MOQ's intellectual level is just like the social and biological levels in this respect.


We can see that even highly intellectual practices like science or professional philosophy are inherently collective, public activities. It's not just that everyone is engaged in an ongoing dialogue in the peer-reviewed Journals, but everyone is suspend in the same language, shares a set of common meanings, definitions, and often work together for common goals. Of course this involves particular persons, just as social level roles like Kings, Bishops, and Knights are played by particular persons. But there is no escape into individuality at the intellectual level. The kind of individualism that allows the sophomoric relativist to believe he stands alone and has his own definitions, his own concepts, his own mythos, is not a lone wolf hero. He's just ungeared from the common lot of humanity. As Pirsig points out, a person with a culture of their own is an insane person. The intellectual level could not function without the common practices and a common set of terms in which meanings can be shared.


As Dan pointed out, the contrarians who act as agents of cultural evolution are responding to and acting within their society. They are acting as critics and stand out from the keepers of the status quo but they are crucial to that groups needs and their rebellion only makes sense in relation to that society. 


The truth is exactly the opposite of what Ayn Rand, Maggie Thatcher, and Rand Paul think. They think there is no such thing as society, that society is only a collection of individuals. Individuality is actually a social construct, an achievement of development that can only ever happen because we're social creatures first. 


And that's also why we don't get to decide for ourselves what words mean or what defines concepts. Communication simply isn't possible without a shared, public language, a common set of understandings. And when guys like John use simplistic relativism to defend Absolute Idealism, it's hard to believe that they're operating within that shared public space. To complain that someone is misusing the key terms of a discussion is not some petty, pedantic complaint about grammar or spelling or what ever. It's a complete show-stopper because then you can't exchange ideas. It makes communication impossible.