Thanks Steve, MarshaV, X Acto Steve it may take me a while digest all of your post. But here is a quick response.
If you look at the level of law, you will see that this is where the rubber meets the road. Is abortion right or wrong, good or evil? What about slavery? What about the other hot topic issues of our culture. Is homosexuality evil, or ok? What about adultery? Or good old fashion fornication? What then about pedophilia, etc. Where does it end. There are standards, absolute standards. At the level of law a decision is made about right and wrong, and unequivocal answer. No your truth is as good as my truth nonsense. How do you know the universe didn't give us standards. By what means do you know this. Your presupposition is that your reason is ultimate, and legislative of reality. How do you know God did not reveal his truth and standards to man, and tell him to write it in a Book! How do you know? And how can you claim your answer has any validity, or superiority to mine or someone else's? Where does freedom come from, personal, or political? What world view did respect for human rights come from? These answers don't have many equally valid answers, but one! The Romantic poets were shocked at the bloodshed of the French revolution. They made a naive judgment about human nature and their own philosophy. Their view of human nature, and of the roots of just political institutions that would protect them was wrong! What was different about the French revolution and the American revolution. The answer is that they were based on different world views, with a different understanding of truth, which derived from differing ideas about the origin of truth, and Ultimate reality, or Divinity. There is a place and a time where multiple perspectives on reality or ok and even useful; and there are times when it will lead you to total folly. But beyond this-what makes something good anyway? What makes something just. You must start by telling me your epistemology. You must have a valid way of knowing truth, or you are playing a wishing game. And without such a reliable foundation, someone will impose their truth on you, and take away your liberty. Thanks, Jon On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 4:47 PM, Steven Peterson <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi Jon, > > On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 3:08 PM, Jon Bennett <[email protected]> wrote: > > So just what does the moq say of honest, truth, and absolutes, or how to > > discern them. I know P doesn't like relativism. But how does the moq > avoid > > it? How do you tell what is true when there are disagreements about the > > truth? > > > Relativism with regard to truth is that position that there is no such > thing as truth. We can avoid such relativism even though people > disagree about what the truth is so long as we agree that there is > something to be disagreeing about. > > Your second question, "how can well tell what is true?" raises the > issue of relativism with respect to justification. Are there standards > for justification that we can appeal to that will ensure that if we > correctly apply them that we will only ever believe true statements? > The universe does't hand us such standards, so we are forced to answer > a second order question of justification whenever we believe that we > have found a sure fire method for uncovering the truth. That second > order question is, how can we justify our particular standards for > justification? I don't think that there is anything nonhuman to appeal > to here. We are left to hash this out in conversation when we want to > convince someone else of what we want them to believe and why we think > that they ought to be convinced to believe it. > > At this point someone who thinks that they do have in hand some method > that stands outside of culture and history to uncover the truth will > call me a relativist. This is not a charge that we need to accept any > more than we ought to feel forced to answer "is the Quality in the > subject or in the object?" The charge of relativism comes from the > presupposition that we ought to have a philosophical foundation for > our truth claims and in not having one we are thought to be somehow > suffering for its lack. "Is it absolute or relative?" is a version of > "is it objective or merely subjective?" It is one of those > philosophical Platypi hat get cleared up once we drop the > subject-object picture. We don't need a philosophical foundation > grounded in objective first principles to assert that the Nazis were > wrong. We just need to offer some high Quality reasons why that is so > perhaps based on a story of, say, the evolution of types of value > patterns instead of a philosophical system of deductions based on > ahistorical notions of Human Nature or Reason. We MOQers have dropped > such notions in favor of a Darwinian account of the evolution of > language and humanity and intellect. We don't have a way of answering > the charge of relativism other than by attacking the philosophical > premises from which it makes sense to ask "Is the Quality in the > subject or the object?" and "is it absolute or merely relative?", but > I think we should deny it nevertheless just as we deny being > absolutists. > > Best, > Steve > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
