Pragmatism not as content but as approach, as commitment to context and purpose. Intelligeable communication and unpacking complex issues as examples of this.
...If that's pragmatism, most everyone on the list comes off as pretty pragmatist to me. Why do you think my posts often end up as minor tomes? It's not _just_ procrastination you know. It reflects a similar commitment to providing descriptive content when I make points, rather than throwing off coded concepts which I know are of limited currency. Nor do I see others going around talking in priestly tongues whose translations they jealously guard.
I do see I shouldn't have framed my questions as "What does your Pragmatism edify about..." but rather, "What do you, Paul, holder of some substantive understandings, think about..."
My mistake results from the fact that you seem to wiggle between "mere approach not content" and some "content" which on many issues isn't clear to me. Due to this slipperiness, Pragmatism, the thing in whose name you tend to criticize the substantive content of others, comes off looking like substantive content itself.
Put differently: for someone committed to discerning plural purposes in life's complex project, you're kind of an impatient listener. Maybe if you'd listen harder in the posts you're so quick to nip at, you'd see that they aren't putting the cart before the horse, as you say, but that their horse is pulling a purpose different than the ones you already know all about.
My impression is that the posts you find most "fact-starved" raise questions about deeply entrenched structures whose effects may feel like common sense to you but not to the posters. It seems to come up alot for instance around gender and Lacanian-influenced analyses, concerned as they are with how social forces take root on the most unconscious levels. The "facts" involved in drawing out these more deeply entrenched forces don't take a parallel form to, say, statistics on the workings of the American justice or welfare system. So it might require a more patient listening on your part.
Or from another vat: you still don't know what concerned me about Buffy, as you continue to assert that we were talking about "the program, not Western modernity." The program's a subset of that modernity, isn't it? The day Arianna H. comes to you to talk all about her model charity, I hope you don't let her likewise limit the terms of discussion. "Paul, you've only read _two_ reports on this charity, and anyway we're not _talking_ about the socioeconomic system!"
Of course of course I'm not suggesting you shouldn't question posts that don't sit right with you. I mean hell, aspects of the Lacanian stuff don't sit right with me either. But dios mio, why not start by giving people the benefit of the doubt, and ask your questions constructively? Not to sound too utopian but maybe we'd all learn something.
>Rather than slog through the rest of Maureen’s post, I think it’s best
>to end here, not because I find what she says uninteresting or
>unimportant, but because she has mis-attributed a position to me, which
>most of the rest of her post is dedicated to attacking.
"Maureen" remains persuaded that you do universalize certain local understandings. Given her finite exposure to your framework, she acknowledges that further communication might result in adjustment of that view.
She further points out that "dedicated to attacking" is a strong characterization of a post which, some ribbing aside, posed attentive questions befitting a respected interlocutor; provided non-jargony context when expressing doubts; drew out the value she saw in your approach as she understood it, and constructively suggested where she thought those insights were best extended.
If this is dedication to attack, Maureen beseeches like attacks, rather than quick dismissals of her Procustean knee-jerk theories.
>Maureen goes on to talk about "your individualistic pragmatism".
>But James himself was highly skeptical about individualism.
>[...]
Maureen is grateful for this background information, and is delighted to hear of James' skepticism towards individualism. However, as you pointedly advised, her assessment was based solely on what she saw reflected in your LBO comments. She is in no position to surmise the source of those tendancies she found ill-advised.
Maureen