[lit-ideas] Re: Barrack shoe-in after Great-Aunt's crack-den shown to fund early anti-slavery and new Toni Morrison stuff {was Re: Study: Media coverage has favored Obama campaign
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 01:53:21 +0000 (GMT)
I'll probably be up next night stupidly following your strange democratic
system.
Donal
Apologies to Walter btw
I'm still thinking of something decent enough to say in response to Walter's
overly generous comments on a previous post of mine (I'm not that astute
Walter, except maybe to the extent I believe you are genuine in suggesting some
of my remarks may be).
That the CatImp does not equal the Golden Rule is probably right, but how they
may be related still troubles me, as does the CI itself as being explanatory of
moral thinking. [My copy of Paton's book on this I haven't even yet located,
and if I had would my duties included reading it (again)]?
Nevertheless I do think that even if we agree (and even this is problematic) to
treat 'like cases alike' we have the problem of characterising what makes them
'alike'. It might seem Plato's 'Theory of Forms' was at least an attempt to
answer this (i.e. things are alike insofar as they are reflections of same
Ideal Form) but no deeper answer has been forthcoming. The Popperian answer is
(I guess) that 'alikeness' is _logically_ a matter of POV [i.e. the theory of
'similarity-in-_which_-respect' that underpins all our theories of
'likeness-ness' is a theory where the _which_ reflects a POV].[[This is a
Kantian answer that many a Wittgensteinian might also agree to]].
I am tempted to elaborate on Popper's 'sovereignty' "paradoxes", not because
they obviously address CI issues, but because they are striking in their own
right:- e.g. democracy is wrongly conceived, according to Popper, as 'majority
rules' - the right 'conception' of 'democracy' is that it is a system where we
can get rid of misrule without violence. The primary aim of civilisation [and
democracy is a step forward in civilisation in his view] is the reduction of
violence (though he believes also we have at times to use violence to achieve
this aim, and finds this not paradoxical in any avoidable way but simply part
of the dilemmas facing humans who want to reduce violence).
This is, I think, a truly profound conception of democracy - one shorn of its
authoritarian strands and placed within a wider context of fallibilism and the
'critical approach' - that is, the fallibilism and critical approach that
Popper uses to characterize science, he applies in his political philosophy.
I hope your elections are characterised by little violence, and little
manipulation and corruption. Respect to McCain but I want Obama to win.
As to Palin, John Cleese has been quoted as saying "I used to think Michael was
the funniest Palin."
Best to everyone on the list, whatever their preferences. Whatever they are,
there is no 'Hello again' to Bush. This, I believe, is good.
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