> I see Ken's comments leading him to reject the "whole" out
of principle. Once Ken has done that I think to replace the
sense of whole that is lost, Ken tries to use an ethical and
moral system which takes into account that he has no whole in
the sense I have in my thinking.
Hegel said "the whole is true." In other words the "whole" is the phenomenology of the spirit. You would have to be insane to accept Hegel at face value these days (last time i checked human beings weren't all that omnipotent). Adorno inverted Hegel to preserve the possibility of critique: "the whole is false." My interpretation of this debate runs like this: things are screwed up, people need to be responsible and held accountable. That's my elaboration of a 'moral' system.
> Doyle
> "Emphatic rationality" I think means adding in how one
feels about what one reasons.
Not quite - it is an acknowledgement of moral substance in any form of ethical reasoning. Ie. you can't separate knowledge from value / meaning. "The sky is blue" at some level contains more than just a propositional claim about an objective state of affairs. In many respects - it tells you to act as if the sky were blue.
> So from my point of view I can see interconnectedness not
as constantly reshaping things, but contributing to a stable
sense of understanding.
Right - and this is linked with a moral web of some sort that 'emphatically' presses its way through the validity claim you are making about connectedness.
ken