onegoodmove

">Anal Philosopher recently linked to an article by his friend John Ray titled Lakoff "Deconstructed". Ray's approach violates two ideals Anal Philosopher claims to admire. Scholarly writing and the principle of charity. Ray, in our opinion, has either not read Lakoff's book or needs a remedial reading course. Right in the beginning Ray gets Lakoff wrong. "Lakoff has written a book which purports to explain the Left/Right polarity of politics as Mother-oriented politics vs. Father-oriented politics, " It's Nuturant Parent not Mother- oriented. There is a significant difference, and one, even a cursory reading of Lakoff's book makes clear. In the liberal world view a Mother or a Father could be nurturant. So is Lakoff implying that mothers can't be strict by calling the conservative world-view Strict Father? I should say at the outset that, though I have used the term "Strict-Father" to name the model given, there are variants of the model that can be used by a Strict Mother as well. There are many mothers, especially tough single mothers, who function as Strict Fathers. But the model is an idealization, and is intended here only as that. (Lakoff, p. 67) Not only does Ray exhibit bad scholarship,...

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Posted by Norm at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (1)

"There is no self, if by self we mean some central cognitive essence that makes me who and what I am. In its place there is just the 'soft self': a rough-and-tumble, control-sharing coalition of processes—some neural, some bodily, some technological—and an ongoing drive to tell a story, to paint a picture in which 'I' am the central player." —From "Natural-Born Cyborgs" by Andy Clark...

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Posted by Chris Jenson at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There has been a lot of discussion on my weblog and here about Moral Politics:How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff You remember. Categories of Moral Action here's the summary. Conservative Categories of Moral Action 1. Promoting Strict Father morality in general. 2. Promoting self-discipline, responsibility, and self-reliance. 3. Upholding the Morality of Reward and Punishment a. Preventing interference with the pursuit of self-interest by self-disciplined, self-reliant people. b. Promoting punishment as a means of upholding authority. 4. Protecting moral people form external evils. 5. Upholding the Moral Order. Liberal Categories of Moral Action 1. Empathetic behavior and promoting fairness. 2. Helping those who cannot help themselves. 3. Protecting those who cannot protect themselves. 4. Promoting fulfillment in life. 5. Nurturing and strengthening oneself in order to do the above. I found a great post via Jake at Lying Media Bastards I've pretty much absconded with the whole thing. I trust he wont judge me to harshly. Good stuff Jake I'm looking forward to your promised further comments on this topic. Anyway Jake points out that Tim left the following comment in response to Income mobility post by Cal Pundit. Conservatives are winning the debate because they have shifted...

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Posted by Norm at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Chris and I were not the only two to read Bush's Critics Meet the Logic Police and conclude it was a sham. Shortly before posting our take on Mr. Burgess-Jackson's article I returned to Tech Central to get the URL and discovered there were quite a number of comments posted in response to the article. A quick perusal of the comments unearthed this from Stephen Downes the author of the Guide to Logical Fallacies I mirror here. I found it quite remarkable how closely his words paralleled those Chris and I had written. It is articles like this that give philosophers a bad name. Shrouded in a cloak of rhetoric lie fundamental misdirections that lead the reader to an incorrect conclusion. The key point in the argument is that while critics attack Bush's motives for attacking Iraq, the real question is whether the war was justified, and that this justification is an objective measure independent of Bush's motives. Of course, an analysis of the criticisms of the war finds that they are not based on a criticism of Bush's motives. Rather, they were based on the observation that the reasons being advanced in favour of the war were not sufficient...

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Posted by Norm at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

We were excited to see a philosopher contributing to public discourse when we came across Keith Burgess-Jackson' Bush's Critics Meet the Logic Police despite its title. He starts his article by suggesting that philosophers can contribute much to the public discourse on a variety of political issues. We wholeheartedly agree with him on this. We were hoping that his article would point out fallacies progressives make so that we could avoid them in the future. We were severely disappointed by his article. The level of scholarship is just not there and his work gives philosophers a bad name. If some philosophers are logic police, then others are officers from internal affairs. Burgess Jackson writes. "Either there is a justification for the war (objectively speaking) or there is not. If there is, then it doesn't matter what motivated President Bush. If there isn't, then it doesn't matter what motivated President Bush. Either way, it doesn't matter what motivated President Bush." Though Bush's motivations may not be relevant in establishing the logical possibility of providing a moral justification for war, they are relevant in judging whether Bush himself was moral in instigating that war. We don't know about Mr. Burgess-Jackson, but it...

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Posted by at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Why the Web Will Win the Culture Wars for the Left: Deconstructing Hyperlinks Cultural conservatives have a lot of worries. They fear that Grand Theft Auto and other video games will turn their kids into crowbar-wielding criminals, they believe that Hollywood will turn their daughters to floozies and sons to gigolos, and they despise the constitutional barrier between church and state as an unnecessary evil that has estranged religious beliefs from public life and eroded the core values of our country. Underlying all these concerns is the overarching belief that moral relativism -- which holds that competing claims to right and wrong cannot be judged objectively -- is making America a godless, bankrupt country, and a very dangerous place to raise a kid. [snip] That will change. Like reading or breathing, web browsing itself is agnostic with respect to politics and culture. Unlike reading or breathing, however, surfing mimics a postmodern, deconstructionist perspective by undermining the authority of texts. Anyone who has spent a lot of time online, particularly the very young, will find themselves thinking about content -- articles, texts, pictures -- in ways that would be familiar to any deconstructionist critic. And a community of citizens who think...

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Posted by Norm at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

"Fundamentalism means sticking strictly to the script, which in turn means being deeply fearful of the improvised, ambiguous or indeterminate...Since writing is meaning that can be handled by anybody, any time, it is always profane and promiscuous. Meaning that has been written down is bound to be unhygienic...Fundamentalism is the paranoid condition of those who do not see that roughness is not a defect of human existence, but what makes it work." Terry Eagleton --The Guardian 22 Feb. 2003...

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Posted by Norm at 2:06 PM | Permalink

Julian Baganni writes in Making Sense Since the Ancient Greek philosopher Protagora proclaimed that 'Man is the measure of all things' there have always been philosophers who it would be accurate to describe as relativists. But very few of these relativisms boil down to the belief that no 'truths' are superior or inferior to any other, or that truth is simply what people happen to believe. I think postmodernism is often unfairly criticized as not believing one truth is better than another to wit. An empiricist remarked that the test of truth is to punch a postmodernist in the face and see if he can explain why it hurts. The postmodernist responded with: punch an empiricist and then ask if he could tell you what the pain means?...

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Posted by Norm at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Bad Moves: Dubious advantages via Butterflies & Wheels By Julian Baggini "We do not generally employ people who have spent a career doing something else and who have turned to executive search as a second career. We want our people to be the best at hiring great management. … To do this well you need to get the kind of commitment you have in a first career, not a second one." Armstrong International advertisement, 2003 campaign (Source: The Economist, 29 March 2003) The comic alter ego of Graham Fellows, the hapless singer-songwriter John Shuttleworth, had a wonderful line in his stage show when he evangelised to the audience over the merits of a well-known sports drink. "It's isotonic," he said, "it cares for the environment." As with so much of the Shuttleworth act, behind the banality lies an astute observation. Like many of us, Shuttleworth is easily impressed by the claims made by manufacturers and advertisers for their products, even when he doesn't understand what these claims mean. The mere fact that something is presented as an advantage is enough to win him over. This is a version of the wider problem that if a claim is made with sufficient...

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Posted by Norm at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"Butterflies and Wheels (fighting fashionable nonsense)":http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/ fighting fashionable nonsense is an excellent site for those interested in all aspects of Philosophy. Articles, book reviews, news, and a section I found both useful and fascinating called Bad Moves. This is a weekly column by Philosopher Julian Baggini on bad argumentative moves and how to detect them. Here is an example and a timely that is right on target. Bad Moves: Absence and evidence By Julian Baggini "It depends on Saddam. If he co-operates with the inspectors in allowing them not just access but telling them what material he has and allowing them to shut it down and make Iraq safe and free of weapons of mass destruction then the issue is over, but he is not doing that at the moment." Tony Blair, 26 January 2003 (Source: the Guardian, 27 January 2003) The British and American governments have consistently claimed that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. But they have not helped their case by rigging the rules by which their claim is tested. Here's the problem. "continued here":http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/badmovesprint.php?num=9...

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Posted by Norm at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

"For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things … and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture."—Francis Bacon...

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Posted by Norm at 9:51 AM | Permalink

A fascinating look into the nature of truth from Richard Rorty one of my favorite pragmatists. I have reproduced the entire essay, since the formating on his site looks terrible in some browsers making it difficult to read. I also recommend following the link to his home page for links to more of his excellent writing. THE DECLINE OF REDEMPTIVE TRUTH AND THE RISE OF A LITERARY CULTURE Questions such as ?Does truth exist?? or ?Do you believe in truth?? seem fatuous and pointless. Everybody knows that the difference between true and false beliefs is as important as that between nourishing and poisonous foods. Moreover, one of the principal achievements of recent analytic philosophy is to have shown that the ability to wield the concept of ?true belief? is a necessary condition for being a user of language, and thus for being a rational agent. Nevertheless, the question ?Do you believe in truth or are you one of those frivolous postmodernists?? is often the first one that journalists ask intellectuals whom they are assigned to interview. That question now plays the role previously played by the question ?Do you believe in God, or are you one of those dangerous atheists??....

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Posted by Norm at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When I hear the word absolutism used in terms of a world-view I turn and run, I'm frightened by those who think they "know", but absolutism is an appealing idea. How wonderful to look in the "good book" and know how to react in any situation. Man has been searching for this holy grail for centuries and it seems no nearer now than when he began. I'm astounded that much of the world despite millennium of trying and failing, still holds to an absolutist world view. In his book "Twilight of the Idols" Nietzsche writes about "How the 'Real World' at last Became a Myth" Christopher Jenson's essay annotates it to address the metaphysics of Stephen Covey. A metaphysics that is almost identical to Kants. The annotations along with Nietzsche's words provide an excellent way to understand why the absolutist position is untenable. I have pointed to this essay in disscussions with absolutists. The most common response is well, I don't agree with that, but I'll have to think about it and get back to you. To date none have. So the question is where does that leave us, if there are no absolutes on a metaphysical level there are...

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Posted by Norm at 8:26 PM | Permalink