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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (32624)	10/13/2001 8:38:09 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 82486

If Thames believes that based on his personal opinion, and knows it is only his personal opinion, that it isn't "absolutist philosophy, i.e., it is NOT concerned with absolute truth, independent of individuals or communities" I don't think you really understand what absolutist philosophy/belief is. Maybe you should read up on it. Here is something interesting I found: Ideology and Philosophy The decay of absolutist and authoritarian systems of philosophy has certainly contributed to the triumph of the ideology of democracy. Democracies are put under pressure where some specific dogma is held with fanatical zeal, where the spirit of tolerance is regarded as an expression of moral weakness and compromise as an act of opportunism or outright chicanery. That is why a strong democracy tolerates all ideologies, provided only that their adherents play according to the democratic rules of the game. Some have argued that the philosophical temper of empiricism is more congenial to democracy than is any other theory of knowledge. But this is contestable. Many philosophical positions can be squared with sufficient ingenuity with a variety of political faiths. Thomas Hobbes and David Hume were empiricists but unfriendly to democracy, whereas the empiricist John Locke was a democratic constitutionalist. The French philosopher Jean- Jacques Rousseau was committed to a paradoxical set of beliefs about human beings, nature, and civil society. The English utilitarians and the American pragmatists, key players in much democratic social reform, embraced empirical approaches with ingenious modifications that recognized the active and selective character of human thought. But other reformers brought theistic and ontological commitments to bear in shaping their democratic faith. Nonetheless, to the extent that democratic social movements are movements of social reform, they often embrace an empirical philosophical attitude to values and conflicts of values in order to reveal the interests at their source. The English utilitarians and the American pragmatists who were in the forefront of democratic social reform adopted the empirical approach of Hobbes and Hume with modifications that recognized the active and selective character of human thought. In the American pragmatic tradition thought does not limp after events but redetermines them.

To: Greg or e who wrote (32624)	10/14/2001 3:37:39 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

>> "And I believe absolute truth is not to be found in the visionary dreamings of ancient men and their books of wishes." That's an absolute statement, and as such constitutes a contradiction on your part, because you claim to be a relativist. There, I found it, do I get a cookie? Only if you go buy your own. I've made a statement of opinion. I don't claim absolute truth for it (even on my own, still less handed down on tablets of stone or strange dreams). A relativist can believe things, state things, affirm things. He (or indeed she) also recognises that he may be mistaken, and that his opinion is just that. It may be better backed up by logic, by observation, by the witnessing of others, by evidence... it may even be backed up by natural law, inescapable physical truth, in which case it's rather foolish to doubt it. I'm not relativist about gravity, for example. But I don't claim the right to dictate others' feelings, beliefs or wishes, and don't claim truth overriding them. Your astronaut might or might not see god if s/he tried breathing vacuum... you say yes, I say no, neither of us can actually know - no one can. But believe it or not, said cosmonaut will still freeze, die and be subject to gravity. Those are absolutes. Now continue to worship at your own shrine. Try not to be smug about your belief, it's very unbecoming in a messiah. Still more so, of course, if you're not possessed of absolute, revelatory truth...