You knew I couldn't keep out of this discussion forever, didn't cha? Just
had to keep going.
Andy is right, he just says it all wrong. When Andy says "what works is
true", he doesn't mean 'true', he means 'works'. What works works. That's
all one can say. And Phil is right, it doesn't have to work for any
blithering millennia, or even for anyone else but oneself. It works,
goddamnit!, it works. That's all any of us can say. Fascism works. So
does democracy. So does Republican, greed-driven, militaristic,
war-mongering evil. It works to keep getting the bastards elected. That's
not an editorial comment, by the way, I'm just uses them to point out that
some of these political thingies work for a long time, some less so. Oh,
please, please, please, dear God, make Republicanism 'less so'. What works
works. Truth shmruth. Centralized economies worked for awhile. Pulled
Russia out of feudalism within 50 years, then it didn't work so well.
Things change. America seems ready to abandon democracy for theocratic
fascism -- don't you just love the irony of our war on Islamic
extremists? -- democracy worked for us for awhile, now it seems on the way
out. Why? Things change, hey, what can I say? The sooner Andy erases the
word 'true' and all its cognates from his vocabulary, the better off he'll
be. The Inner Moral Law, as Veronica's most recent post testifies, is
nothing more than what your mama taught you. Take the umbrella to the lost
and found, like a good boy and I'll love you even more, take the $300,000
dollars also. But if your mother smacked you for giving back the $1 you saw
someone drop, "dumb ass", then honesty doesn't work so well. You know
that. I know that. The American people know that. So you go, Andy, just
clean up your argument. Never ever, ever, ever use the word 'truth' again.
Nor justice, nor beauty, nor good, nor freedom, nor Christianity, nor
Western Civilization, nor any other kind non-definable noun. Tell us about
your mother. That's the closest to truth you'll ever come.
Mike Geary the Conscience Of My Race -- uh, yes, Memphis, so what?
Andy Amago wrote:
"I said what works for millennia."
Why pick millennia? Why not decades or months? Seems a bit arbitrary. But this is the least of Andy's problems.
First, whatever else we mean by 'truth', we mean that it gets right the way things are. On Andy's account of 'what works for millennia', it is obvious that we have various competing accounts, that have endured over millennia, of how things are. I gave the example of religions, several of which have worked over millennia, but there are many other examples. On Andy's account, we could have at least two incompatible 'truths'. Given what we mean by 'truth', this is incoherent.
Second, also when we talk about 'truth', we mean something that won't be 'not true' in the future. On Andy's account, there is no reason why something that works for millennia might stop working. The world changes, so why shouldn't what works in the world? On Andy's account, we could have something that is true but shortly thereafter not be true. Given what we mean by 'truth', this is incoherent.
Third, there is still the problem of how to reconcile the particularity of 'what works in this case' with Andy's 'what works for millennia'. The problem is that Andy elides the difference between principle and application. For example, there is the principle 'Tell the truth' but there is an important difference between the answers to the questions 'Do you love me?' and 'Does this outfit make me look fat?'. What works for one question most likely will not work for the other. How can we understand this difference when we are told to look for 'what works for millennia'? The principle certainly does extend over millennia but how can the knowledge regarding inter-personal relations? The fact is that very little of 'what works' extends over millennia, something especially true over the last century.
There are philosophers who do think that practices enduring over a long period of time are significant, but only as an indication of something being true. For some philosophers, what matters is that a practice is 'long term coherent' and that such coherence lends justification to holding a proposition as true, or a practice as aiming towards producing true propositions. The difference between this approach and Andy's is Andy's claim that what works is true instead of merely justified. Andy's claim is incoherent but there is reason to think that 'what works for millennia' can be a kind of justification. Just ask the Pope.
Sincerely,
Phil Enns Toronto, ON
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