Steve: I'm not talking about unreasonable people. I am saying that there is no context in which empiricism has pragmatic value. When exactly do you think empiricism makes a difference when it comes to relativism? What sorts of disagreements about facts or ethical truths will appealing to empiricism settle? What sorts of arguments can you as an empiricist make that the people you are accusing of relativism are constrained from making?
Ron: That some things, some ideas, are better than others, a relativists, a nihlist, can SAY that one truth is as good as another they can SAY truth has no meaning outside cultural context but then they would be ignoring the fact that they make value distinctions everyday that run contrary to their arguements. Steve: You are making huge unsubstantiated leaps here from Rorty's inability (and yours) to "get anything over on the Nazi" to relativism as the doctrine that we shouldn't make judgments or that cultures can't be judged. Of course they can. Rorty says they can and are judged ethnocentrically. Do you have a non ethnocentric way of judging them. If you do, please provide it. If not, then please shut up about Rorty being a relativist. It's not only ignorant, it's kind of insulting, you know? Ron: Unfortunately Pirsig does say that cultures may be judged by their values, " a culture that values intellectual patterns over social patterns is a superior culture to one that does not" and that seems pretty ethnocentric to me especially if one takes what Pirsig says about some patterns being evolutionarily superior to others. .. 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
