Ethical foundations of the left

Ian Murray seamus2001 at home.com
Sun Jul 29 10:58:39 PDT 2001



> when did the problem of other minds become such an issue? is this
because
> of the red ball example? ken! ya shoulda used the health care
example.
> classic logic examples are THE dorkiest.
======== Intersubjectivity and CA are part and parcel of the problem of other minds, no? What I've been attempting to avoid is getting bogged down in the paraconsistent logics of intersubjectivity that come about when participants use different constitutive metaphors. Red ball, Schmed ball, we're talking about the non-coercive and coercive conditions of 'belief change' and epistemic stability and their social and material effects through historical time.
>
> mein gott! "We cannot 'understand' the 'what' - the semantic content
of the
> systematically distorted expression--without at the same time
'explaining'
> the 'why'--the origins of systematic distortion itself."
======== Yes, but nothing precludes that [the explanation] from being 'distorted' as well. We tacitly assume there is such a thing as the final explanation of distorted and undistorted communication at the 'end' of our inquiries. What I think we should be looking at are the processes whereby we keep talking, even as we're shifting communicative and metacommunicative levels in order to get beyond disagreements that create adversariality, domination etc. It's a matter of learning from each other in order to get beyond those communicate attitudes and the institutional sanctioning of their use that we want to change, no? The communicational matrix of domination and exploitation isn't an iron cage; we've just been hoodwinked by those who do the dominating that it is.


>
> he's addressing this in terms of a specific set metatheoretical
> controversies in the social sciences:
>
> 1. with the rise of science the classical conception of politics
changed.
> Theory was reduced to logically integrated systems of quantitatively
> expressed, lawlike statements characteristic of natural sciences.
"Given a
> description of the relevant initial conditions, such theories could
be used
> to predict future states of a system; providing the relevant factors
were
> manipulable, they could also be used to produce desired states of
affairs." ======= Which is why us working class stiffs hate political theory speak by talking heads. It's a ficitve non-representation of those communicative events of our work life, and the political speech of the unwashed, untheorizing [this is problematic a la Churchland, I admit] 'masses'. It's part and parcel of the languages of disciplinary elitism/expertise and the cognitive/communicational paternalism that comes with it. The above is just a rehash of the physics envy that Leibniz started with his computational approach to conflict resolution/diplomatic controversy.


>
> 2. this ideal was adopted in politics. hello to all the econdrone
and poli
> sci wankers on this list. where IS hoover anyway? adopted in
sociology too
> but i don't consort with those types! :)
>
> 3. along with this came the focus on objectivism, the focus on
technocratic
> administration, the focus on proceduralism. Practice is reduced to
the
> manipulation, a technical-administrative problem rather than any
sort of
> reflection on WHY THE FUCK WE ARE DOING IT THIS WAY. it goes back to
the
> weber debate. Habermas recasts the distinction between
Zweckrationalitaet,
> instrumental rationality where action is aimed at achieving some
ulterior
> end, and Wertrationalitaet, value rationality, where communicative
action
> (understanding) is good in and of itself.
========== Of course, and the ultimate in manipulability came with the illusion of objectivity/invariance - the platonic maneuver in asserting there was/is the one best/true procedure with, of course, those who had/have power just so happening to be the ones who 'discovered' the one best way of procedure/method etc.. When it's really the issue of who got the communicative power to do that and how they used speech and other forms of coercion in the process. Oliver Wendell Holmes and the infernal arbitrariness of choice and all that. There ain't no 'outside' of knowledge/power in the administration of people and the production of commodities.

Ian

Ian



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