Around the world economics is in disarray. Most of the west is being told it must face austerity and cut and sell its public sector to the NuPolitburo of the filthy rich. China zooms ahead - except it has built 64 million apartments no one lives in - including 12 ghost cities. Deng has shades of Mao and is inflating GDP with a housing bubble.
It's obvious the world needs to change. Human beings don't think much and much of what we think up to feel superior to animals turns out to be rot. We even find syntax in bird song. We now know that human decision-making is not rational and there are good reasons to believe over-focus on the rational does not produce Mr Spock but psychopaths. I looked at the exams our 15-16 year olds do at school recently - in the UK these are called GCSEs. Even the higher level is drivel and I find it hard to fell right about incarcerating our young for this crude testing over 11 years. The hack-drivel of university is no better. I sometimes witness intelligent people being taught by idiots with the answer book. We lack an epistemology of 'things this big'. What we once called bildung is now just a dreadful burden in what seems a freezing moral climate as bad as Soviet Paradise (and there still is Sino Paradise) or that of other vile imperialism. I don't mean to raise the Gulags and various genocides of long history other than in wondering if the same underlying crap with its more cuddly modern face is driving the same old society of despair. Lonnie talked of the game of exchanging 'names' in discussion on Kant - I happen to think this wrong when trying to get at what might matter for realist or other epistemology, but he undoubtedly has a point. Intellectuals are bought off or bought up very easily in our economic systems. Many of the conferences I attended were just places for us to talk and let our hair down instead of teaching the rot expected of us. They became Lonnie's Game with food and exotic locations. How can 'cuts' be an answer to anything when there is so much that needs doing? I understand the muck about the private sector cavalry rushing in - but this is drivel on any empirical basis. Centralising authority tends to raise Soviet Paradise, Mao's 'great leap forward' and the like, but I believe there is 'another Politburo' that is stopping progress towards a more decent society. How do I explain this to people who struggle conceptually much beyond accepting the word 'moon' when I point at it? Most argument burns out in the exasperation of having to say that, say, "realism" isn't the easy target they think it is. After that comes collapse into standard varieties of character assassination like being accused of being a commie because you can distinguish between Harpo and Groucho. My question is 'where is the epistemology of big issues'? I'd appreciate any answers - my own suspicion is that the data is obscured as surely as some turd telling you Ratners' gold is ethically mined is lying. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Epistemology" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/epistemology?hl=en.
