[lit-ideas] Re: Univocal philosophy as the value of transcendental claims?

John McCreery wrote:

"It is clear that Phil has never been an ethnographer or historian."

Well, I hope it is clear that at least I am doing neither ethnography
nor history.


John continues:

"The assumption that there is some moral quality that transcends the
historic and ethnographic is a working hypothesis."

Calling this a 'working hypothesis' is a bit of an understatement.
The same 'working hypothesis' that makes possible the study of moral
acts across time and cultures is what makes the disciplines of history
and ethnography possible.  If such a transcending is not possible,
then neither is history nor ethnography, so we are a wee bit beyond
'working hypothesis' here.


John then suggests:

"Why not a series of "thefts," analogous to Wittgenstein's games, with
family resemblances that link A to B and B to C, while A and C have
nothing in common?"

I am quite happy with this analogy, with one minor objection regarding
John's phrasing, and don't understand how John sees it as an
objection.  It may be that the card game, solitary, is very different
from hockey, nevertheless both are understood as examples of games.
Of games one can say that there are rules, and that the game is played
according to these rules.  One can say that there are players who are
playing the game and those who are not playing.  One can say that
there is a point where a game begins to be played and a point where it
is no longer being played.  So, actually some things can be said about
what makes a game possible all the while allowing that games A, B and
C have only family resemblances.

This is analogous to everything I have been saying about morality.
What counts as theft will differ over time and cultures, but there is
at least one thing that can be said about every case of theft, about
what makes stealing wrong, namely the imperative "Don't".


Sincerely,

Phil Enns
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
where you can't throw a stone without hitting an ethnographer,
which given the ethnographers I have met,
may not be a bad thing.
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