[lit-ideas] Re: Malt, Coffee & Chuck Taylor

  • From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 19:45:08 -0230

Quoting Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>:


> One question that one might put to the
> historicists/culturalists is, do they think that their
> own ideas are only valid within their own
> geo-historical location ?

You render the question as an empirical one, and, hence, it is without any
philosophical interest. The interesting philosophical (epistemological)
question is whether they have an epistemic right to believe otherwise. The
premise of this question is that one may not be rationally entitled to the
beliefs or views one actually asserts or purports to have given their relation
to other views or beliefs held by that same person. (Not even in a democracy is
"wanting to believe" an epistemically relevant factor for truth or rightness
claims.)

P.S. I don't think that ideas can be valid or invalid. Validity is logically a
property of inference (and sometimes of bus transfers). Inference is possible
only from one or more statements to another statement understood as a
conclusion. Example: Some triangles are obtuse. Walter is obtuse. Therefore,
Walter is a triangle. 

Truth is a possible property of statements or propositions. A statement can be
either true or false but not both. (Since the statement that a statement can be
both true and false would itself be both true and false.)

Returning to a bold but disciplined Glenlivet,  Walter

Walter C. Okshevsky
Memorial University

------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts:

  1. Home
  2. lit-ideas
  3. Archive
  4. 06-2006