lbo-talk-digest V1 #4729

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sun Aug 12 07:42:28 PDT 2001


kelley wrote:
>
> >
> you're still not understanding that it has nothing to do with a seminar.
> people give reasons in other cultures. Why doesn't it rain? The rain god
> must be unhappy. How was the earth created... yadda yadda.
>
> These are reasons, are they not?
>

You and Ken keep piling up reasons :-) for others not being interested in studies of communicative action, since the conclusions such studies reach are all more or less empty tautologies. The tautology xp = px (e.g., 2 X 1 = 1 X 2) is interesting, not empty, because in very important cases, I am told by a physicist friend, it is not true. But the proposition "people give reasons" is not interesting because apparently there is no context in which it isn't a dull truism.

Carrol



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