onegoodmove

I like the term "divorced from reality" when applied to the sites as opposed to Joe's reaction to them though I perfectly understand how he feels. The distinction of feeling divorced from reality and actually being divorced from reality. One only becomes divorced from reality in the later sense when their world view is Black or White, Right or Wrong, You're either with us or you're against us. Such views simply don't reflect the way the world works. Joe call's it fundamentalism I call it absolutism. The fundamentalism may be right-wing, but is not limited to fundamentalism it is any view that is absolute, inflexible, and unchanging in response to changes in circumstances. It doesn't change over time. The same criteria are always used; the criteria are fixed. They must account for all circumstances.

Sites like the one Joe visited are the product of those who are emotionally attached to certain habitual ways of thinking, their absolutes. Their ability to consider opposing views is compromised. Their responses are habitual and fixed. The prospects of them changing without a change in environment is not good. By enviornment I'm talking about their mental enviornment though a change in physical location can also be helpful. I mean creating new and varied habits. Education for example, the learning of critical thinking skills would be a habit worth developing. Then when exposed to other viewpoints, new ideas, they would have tools that would allow them to better process the content and not react with their standard knee jerk spew. If you have only a few or very narrow habits your chance of changing is unlikely. Hugh LaFollette in his essay on Pragmatic Ethics cites a good example of the problem. "We would be like a chess player who knows only one opening or a musician who plays only one tune. If our opponent makes a different first move, or if the only musical composition we know (" Joy to the World ") is inappropriate in the circumstances (a funeral), then we do not know how to continue. On the other hand, a good chess player knows different openings and employs different strategies. Their knowledge and strategies are habits which pave the intellectual roads along which chess-playing deliberation tends to travel..."this is why multiple habit helps explain creativity whether of chess-playing or of life. Creativity is not some inexplicable mysterious inner power. It arises from a wide set of habits, unified within one person." This is why the absolutist has such difficulty their repertoire is based on some arbitrary rules, and may or may not fit the circumstances.

John Dewey provides a useful example for explaining how an absolute understanding of nature is unnecessary to make progress. Why the absolutist view is not required. Consider this, " Physical science makes claim to disclose not the inner nature of things but only those connections of things with one another that determine outcomes and hence can be used as means." I think that is also true of the moral and ethical questions, we don't need to understand the inner nature of things to make useful and valuable decisions. It requires pursuing knowledge again as Dewey puts it. "the proper sense of the word "knowledge," characterizes intelligently directed experience, as distinct from mere causal and uncritical experience." In the Duemer Erlich discussion Mr. Erlich contends that Joe's pluralistic approach cannot succeed without some predetermined goal or criterion from which to begin. I would argue that it is possible to have criteria without the requirement of either the goal or other absolutist criterion.
Dan perhaps is worried that without some sort of absolutism the quest will descend into to some sort of hellish relativism, at least that's how I interpret his use of the term absolutism. I take a pragmatic view of the world. I believe that meaningful inquiry originates from doing, theorizing is useful but its value arises from experience and is informed by experience. Theorizing without experience is useless. For a pragmatist criterion are not logically prior or fixed since they can and often are supplanted. They are not complete since our history is not complete. Our environment is not fixed but changing. I would agree with Hugh Follette when he says "that a pragmatic ethic employs criteria without being criterial. It is objective without being absolutist. It acknowledges that ethical judgments are relative without being relativistic. And it tolerates — indeed, welcomes — some moral differences, without being irresolute." In short, absolutism is unnecessary to find a useful way to think about our world it is a hindrance. Absolutism is an arbitrary heuristic rather than anything fundamental. I'm always tempted when those on the right make their oh no, moral relativism argument, to simple say so. Sorry but it is simply all we have, learn to live with it. There is however, a middle ground, a disciplined relativism that provides a good way to get about in the world. We don't have to worry about a legitimate perspective, whatever that is supposed to mean. It sounds like an absolutist criteria at work, what legitimizes a perspective, is it the same for all. The problem often comes from a lack of understanding of means and ends. Dewey describes it this way "Ends arise and function within action. They are not as current theories too often imply, things lying beyond activity at which the latter is directed. They are not strictly speaking ends or termini of action at all. They are terminals of deliberation, and so turning points in activity."

The problem with absolutism in any of its many incarnations is that it provides a method for the human mind to view evidence and when the evidence contradicts the habitual viewpoint it is twisted and distorted until finally it again supports the desired view. It feeds the emotional needs of the absolutists. They cease to function in a thoughtful rational way in order to maintian their feel good fix. In doing so they not only harm themselves but others. Absolutists don't subject their views to the scrutiny of others and therein lies the problem. It is critical that we subject our view to such scrutiny as John Stuart Mills expresses it "The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certaintainty still, but we've done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us... This is the amount of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this is the sole way of attain it (Mill, J. S. 1978) and I say "Amen " I'm a pragmatist I embrace a pragmatic way of living, and a pragmatic ethic. Hugh La Follette in the conclusion of his essay on the subject puts it this way. " A pragmatic ethic is not based on principles, but is not unprincipled. Deliberation plays a significant role, albeit a different role than that given it on most accounts. Morality does not seek final absolute answers, yet is it not perniciously relativistic. It does recognize that circumstances can be different, and that in different circumstances, different actions may be appropriate. So it does not demand moral uniformity between people and across cultures. Moreover, it understands moral advance as emerging from the crucible of experience, not through the proclamations of something or someone outside us. Just as ideas only prove their superiority in dialogue and in conflict with other ideas, moral insight can likewise prove its superiority in dialogue and conflict with other ideas and experiences. Hence, some range of moral disagreement and some amount of different action will not be for the pragmatist something to bemoan, It will be integral to moral advancement, and thus should be permitted and even praised, not lamented. Only someone who thought theory could provide final answers and answers with the messy task of doing battle on the marketplace of ideas and of life, would find this regrettable."