Ethical foundations of the left

Ian Murray seamus2001 at home.com
Tue Jul 31 20:26:01 PDT 2001



> > > Lacking a normative foundation, everything slides off into
> >Machiavelli's lap. The proletariat may as well slit their throats
now, because
> >there is no hope for them, or anyone one else.
> >========
> >Second sentence does not follow from the first.
>
>
> Without normative grounds, there is no distinction possible between
a
> supernova, for instance, and the snapping of bones.
======= No, this is merely contingent on the community of speakers have an adequate vocabulary for doing physics and geometry. Look at the Borg, surely they do science?


>Speech makes differentiations possible. It is the medium of our
social lives. It is only
> in language and through language - or some form of internalized
symbolic
> action - that objects appear to us at all - as anything other that
Robin
> William blurry image in that Woody Allen film the name of which I
forget.
> To distinguish between a supernova and the sound of bones snapping
is a
> cognitive activity, i.e. it is a rational activity (how else are we
to
> understand reason if it isn't linked to our everyday cognitive
processes...
> I'm not into this idea of reason being high and mighty, neither is
Habermas).
>
> This is a really elementary point. Human beings coordinate their
activity
> on the basis of communication. No, not solely [should i have to say
> that?!?]. When we do so, build into the structure of speech - which
is
> onto-genetic... if this term doesn't fit Party loyalties, then let's
say
> that built into the means of production and reproduction - is a
> presupposition that someone that once told you what the words meant
(a
> parent for instance), will understand them when you repeat them back
to them. ======= I have no truck with iterative learning of language, but the above is makes the normative/non-normative irrelevant. There is communication about the normative, but to say communication is normative doesn't get us very far at all. What's the difference between saying communication is formative and normative, especially on a planet loaded with non-human communication systems.


>
> >"Private property is normative"
> >
> >"No, it's ideological"
> >
> >"No it isn't"
> >
> >"Yes it is"
> >
> >...and on it goes....
>
> Until someone points out that private property is a social relation,
and
> then the person that denies this is either an idiot (Habermas's
term, not
> mine [I have a page ref]), dogmatic, or stunned (in the best
possible sense
> of the term).
======== That's irrelevant. There is no one true theory of property any more than there is one true theory of why some humans have religious beliefs. Thus there is at least one context of social significance where the ideology/normativity distinction won't help and to go meta invites interminableness.


> >the ideology/normative boundary/opposition is at the point of
> >diminishing returns, imo.
>
> Well, apply the law of diminishing returns to itself and then we can
start
> over.
======== What will the reintroduction of the maintenence of the ideology/normative distinction do to change people's minds about the need for parametric social change? How will it help nurses struggling with hospital administrators, or nuclear waste technicians arguing with regulators/legislators who don't know physics or theologians debating philosophers, or enviro's arguing with corporate executives?
>
> >Isn't that what collective action and
> >majoritarianism in political movements are all about? Politics
ain't
> >like science and it's undecideable whether homo idioticus can
> >'transcend' politics.
>
> And yet, we possess the capacity to coordinate our action
consensually. Go
> figure, eh?
======= But as even those of us who are sympathetic to H's views have been saying, the ISS is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for co-ordinating social action. Nor do we need it in order to motivate people to challenge the ongoing performance of the communicationl/behavioral norms that are constitutive of capitalism. It 'defines' an absence, that's all. It imposes no obligations on anyone; the very paradox of non-coercivity.


>
> > > I have to get myself a bumper sticker and a car to go along with
> >this; "End the 'end of ideology thesis' now!"
> > > ken
> >========
> >How about "question capitalism"?
> >Ian
>
> What's the difference?
>
> love,
> ken
========== Less words, easier intelligibility-catchier, lower printing costs!

Ian



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