<DIV>Ian now falls into the Lakoff fallacy: because we talk in metaphors, there is no truth. You know that I know the drill on this interminable debate, and frankly, I got bored with it years ago. Decades ago, actuallly. I don't believe that you are really a pomist or other kind of relativist, and so I don't know why you are trying to provoke me into laying out this tired ground again. I get particulatly wearily of the endless burden shifdting. Look, I wrote a paper on this, The Paradox of Ideology, Canad. J. Phil. 1993. You havea  copy. You want to deal with my views, post specific criticsim. Otherwise, take a hike. jks Ian Murray <seamus2001@attbi.com> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid"> ----- Original Message ----- From: "andie nachgeborenen" <ANDIE_NACHGEBORENEN@YAHOO.COM> To: <LBO-TALK@LBO-TALK.ORG> Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 6:42 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Race > Ian waxes Rortyian. Fortunately, as Rorty admits, the position is self-undermining, since the claim that scientific and all other claims are mere rhetoric is itself, on its own terms, mere rhetoric, and can be reasonably rejected by them of us as distinguish between rationally based belief and rhetorical appeals. That doesn't bother Rorty; he things we rationalists will get bored or bore others with our tedoous talk of nonrhetorical rationality. But I am surprised to see Ian take up the relativist torch. jks > ==================== Ah, a quick rhetorical rejoinder that clings to rationality without so much as a definition except for the putting of a *not* operator to prefix the term's constructed opposite in order to set the former free from the Heraclitean flux of history. Still waiting for the rationalist's non-defeasible definition of the metalinguistic absolute, until then the relativist/absolutist binary just looks like another recursion produced by syntax-grammar dynamics peculiar to human beings........... Undermining is metaphorical, Ian ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><hr SIZE=1> Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/search/mailsig/*http://search.yahoo.com">The New Yahoo! Search</a> - Faster. Easier. Bingo.