Still not getting your drift. You seem to want to lump me in with the post-modernists in the cultural wars. Sorry, don't play that game. Way back in the day I had a really cool group of friends. Half of us were studying English lit and the other half philosophy. There was also a neat kind of symmetry as my best friend (also from the Philosophy department) flatted with the best friend from my flatmate and those two were full-on into Derrida and Foucault (I guess you would call it critical theory nowadays). We had some crazily heated debates over copious bottles of wine. One culminated in a lecturer from the English lit department shouting at me, "There is no truth! Just accept it is true!" hmm. QED I thought. (and yes, I have told this story here before if you think it sounds familiar). Our discussions in the philosophy department were much more into realism vs. idealism, determinism, the philosophy of science, existentialism, the limits of empiricism and yes, logic. I always thought you and I differed on the foundation of moral theory, not on the issue of realism or the predictive power of theory, so I am kind of surprised to see you lump me in with the post-modernists.
Sorry for the slow response, been dealing with...stuff. Yes, I had conflated your rejection of moral universals with rejection of objective reality. My apologies if I mischaracterized your views.
one day I am going to write a really long and boring post about my philosophical views.
Still not getting your drift. You seem to want to lump me in with the post-modernists in the cultural wars. Sorry, don't play that game. Way back in the day I had a really cool group of friends. Half of us were studying English lit and the other half philosophy. There was also a neat kind of symmetry as my best friend (also from the Philosophy department) flatted with the best friend from my flatmate and those two were full-on into Derrida and Foucault (I guess you would call it critical theory nowadays). We had some crazily heated debates over copious bottles of wine. One culminated in a lecturer from the English lit department shouting at me, "There is no truth! Just accept it is true!"
hmm. QED I thought. (and yes, I have told this story here before if you think it sounds familiar).
Our discussions in the philosophy department were much more into realism vs. idealism, determinism, the philosophy of science, existentialism, the limits of empiricism and yes, logic.
<snip>
I always thought you and I differed on the foundation of moral theory, not on the issue of realism or the predictive power of theory, so I am kind of surprised to see you lump me in with the post-modernists.
Sorry for the slow response, been dealing with...stuff.
Yes, I had conflated your rejection of moral universals with rejection of objective reality. My apologies if I mischaracterized your views.
Of course there is! What part of I am at heart a realist do you find hard to understand? (which is basically what I was saying by pursuing logical consistency which would be kind of vacuous were it to have no reference to an objective reality) I think your beef might be with Westlope or RP. Not quite getting your drift here.
Not finding it difficult to understand, just difficult to reconcile with earlier posts.
Still not getting your drift. You seem to want to lump me in with the post-modernists in the cultural wars. Sorry, don't play that game. Way back in the day I had a really cool group of friends. Half of us were studying English lit and the other half philosophy. There was also a neat kind of symmetry as my best friend (also from the Philosophy department) flatted with the best friend from my flatmate and those two were full-on into Derrida and Foucault (I guess you would call it critical theory nowadays). We had some crazily heated debates over copious bottles of wine. One culminated in a lecturer from the English lit department shouting at me, "There is no truth! Just accept it is true!"
hmm. QED I thought. (and yes, I have told this story here before if you think it sounds familiar).
Our discussions in the philosophy department were much more into realism vs. idealism, determinism, the philosophy of science, existentialism, the limits of empiricism and yes, logic.
<snip>
I always thought you and I differed on the foundation of moral theory, not on the issue of realism or the predictive power of theory, so I am kind of surprised to see you lump me in with the post-modernists.
Of course there is! What part of I am at heart a realist do you find hard to understand?
(which is basically what I was saying by pursuing logical consistency which would be kind of vacuous were it to have no reference to an objective reality)
I think your beef might be with Westlope or RP. Not quite getting your drift here.
Not finding it difficult to understand, just difficult to reconcile with earlier posts.
ha, if you think I am a proponent of post-modernism, you read me wrong. PS Never was. Ultimately, and Dugistan is a good example, all such appeals to construed reality and narrative as being ultimately precedent to a logical system are vacuous as they presuppose an agenda that itself needs explaining. You end up with a snake eating its tail pretty quickly or nothing at all matters anymore. That said, there is some (limited) value to the leftist, moral relativist critique of logical systems being based on some kind of inherited value system (narrative) which peoples from other cultures/perspectives might not share. However, contrary to them, I never said that this nullifies any pursuit of logical consistency and the urgent need to reconcile differences in a language that hopefully becomes more universal with age. I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that I thought otherwise. If anything I take the cultural diversity angle to merely mean humility is in order, which I sometimes find lacking among the more vocal advocates of purely rational world views. But that doesn't mean I eschew rationality per se. Quite the opposite.
So I'm going to press a little further and try to put you on record: Is there such a thing as an objective reality against which we can gauge the truth/falsity of a statement, such as "Those weren't Russian bombs falling on Aleppo"? That is is there such a thing as a true statement, or a false one?
Of course there is! What part of I am at heart a realist do you find hard to understand?
(which is basically what I was saying by pursuing logical consistency which would be kind of vacuous were it to have no reference to an objective reality)
I think your beef might be with Westlope or RP. Not quite getting your drift here.
ha, if you think I am a proponent of post-modernism, you read me wrong.
PS
Never was. Ultimately, and Dugistan is a good example, all such appeals to construed reality and narrative as being ultimately precedent to a logical system are vacuous as they presuppose an agenda that itself needs explaining. You end up with a snake eating its tail pretty quickly or nothing at all matters anymore.
That said, there is some (limited) value to the leftist, moral relativist critique of logical systems being based on some kind of inherited value system (narrative) which peoples from other cultures/perspectives might not share.
However, contrary to them, I never said that this nullifies any pursuit of logical consistency and the urgent need to reconcile differences in a language that hopefully becomes more universal with age. I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that I thought otherwise. If anything I take the cultural diversity angle to merely mean humility is in order, which I sometimes find lacking among the more vocal advocates of purely rational world views. But that doesn't mean I eschew rationality per se. Quite the opposite.
So I'm going to press a little further and try to put you on record:
Is there such a thing as an objective reality against which we can gauge the truth/falsity of a statement, such as "Those weren't Russian bombs falling on Aleppo"?
That is is there such a thing as a true statement, or a false one?
how do authoritarians proselytize? when you control the media/narrative it is way easier push delusional bs "our reality" or "standing in our truth"
So NoEnz... Is he doing postmodernism wrong, or does this demonstrate that it's the last refuge of liars and bullies?
ha, if you think I am a proponent of post-modernism, you read me wrong.
PS
Never was. Ultimately, and Dugistan is a good example, all such appeals to construed reality and narrative as being ultimately precedent to a logical system are vacuous as they presuppose an agenda that itself needs explaining. You end up with a snake eating its tail pretty quickly or nothing at all matters anymore.
That said, there is some (limited) value to the leftist, moral relativist critique of logical systems being based on some kind of inherited value system (narrative) which peoples from other cultures/perspectives might not share.
However, contrary to them, I never said that this nullifies any pursuit of logical consistency and the urgent need to reconcile differences in a language that hopefully becomes more universal with age. I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that I thought otherwise. If anything I take the cultural diversity angle to merely mean humility is in order, which I sometimes find lacking among the more vocal advocates of purely rational world views. But that doesn't mean I eschew rationality per se. Quite the opposite.
A related issue under discussion among administration officials is whether the United States should soften its longstanding objection to the court exercising jurisdiction over citizens from a country that is not a party to its treaty, according to officials.
On the table is whether those decisions should instead depend on whether a particular country has a functioning justice system that can handle allegations of war crimes. The rationale is that it would be legitimate for the court to investigate Russian war crimes because Mr. Putin and his commanders appear to be committing them with domestic impunity.
Pentagon officials, however, are said to be balking. They contended that moving to a case-by-case approach would be shortsighted because it would make it harder for the United States to argue against court investigations into potential war crimes by American forces, officials said.
And in a Washington Post opinion column last week, John Bellinger, a national security lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, and Christopher J. Dodd, a former Democratic senator who was responsible for adding the exception to the 2002 law, argued that âU.S. support for an I.C.C. investigation of Russian war crimes would not constitute a double standard or be inconsistent with U.S. objections to the courtâs claimed jurisdiction over U.S. personnel.
âWhile most of the worldâs democracies joined the court a generation ago â including close U.S. allies like Britain â many American leaders were wary, fearing that it could be used or misused someday to prosecute American forces. (...)
Relations plunged during the Trump administration, when a top prosecutor for the court tried to investigate the torture of terrorism detainees during the Bush administration. The government imposed sanctions on court personnel, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced it as corrupt. (...)
