This column is "right on!
I can't let this one pass. It's too good an example of, shall we say, lack of nuance/critical thinking. <g>
<<On the subject of negative media reports out of Iraq, Rumsfeld last month said, "I see what the people in that region are seeing, and so much of it is untrue, so much of it is viciously biased, and parades around as the truth.... And do I think ultimately truth wins out? You bet. I mean, our whole system is based on that, that we can take untruth and, over time, the truth is heard, and it begins to register, and people begin to behave off it. And people who tell untruths ultimately are punished. They're punished, if they're in the journalism business, because people don't read them anymore; they don't tune in. They're punished, if they're in government, by being defeated or deposed.">>
Here we have Rummy talking about truth, the "truth" that is honesty vs. deception.
<<Implicit in Rumsfeld's comments is what philosophers call epistemological optimism. It's the belief that truth — defined as the correspondence between what's thought or said with a reality that exists independently of what's thought or said — can be had.>>
To the author's credit, he does acknowledge that his other kind of "truth," reality vs. errancy, is only implicit. But then he goes on and focuses his discussion on the truth that is implicit rather than the one that is explicit in his lead. And he further muddles that with the kind of "truth" that is fact vs. opinion and the kind of "truth" that is doctrine vs. heresy.
Yeah, that was a nice little lecture on epistemological optimism but it was something of a red herring.
<<That truth is this: Saddam Hussein's Pan-Arabism and Osama bin Laden's Islamism are both, literally, dead ends. Either sanity will prevail in the Islamic world, in which case Muslims will embrace this truth and reject Islamicism, or insanity will prevail in the Islamic world, in which case Muslims will reject it...and suffer.
>>
So now we finally get to it, his "truth." How does that get to be truth? Can we test it with repeated experiments? Or did God speak it to some priest replete with images of Mary in the dust on the church window? When the eco-warriers speak of the truth of global warming, you assail them. But here you say "right on"? Maybe the eco-warriers have some spare bishop's robes they can loan the author.
The statement that was made is an opinion. For the record, it is an opinion with which I happen to agree. It is an opinion that may have a consensus, even a strong consensus. It's certainly a reasonable opinion. But Truth?
All that talk about philosophy shows the good/evil absolutist mind set. This is no more truth than global warming is truth. They are both beliefs. This one is just espoused by a different religion than the global-warming one just as religion has always proclaimed truths--standard procedure for advocacy groups. Ain't no truths in politics, and that's not epistemological pessimism speaking. |
