> > There's another issue you haven't address! ed. We have been talking of
> > the standards of different groups rather loosely. When do we have a
> > different group, though? How do we know that?
>Miles: So to answer your question: we know people belong to different
>groups if they display different beliefs and actions (I hope that
>answer doesn't exasperate you; I think it's reasonable.)
>
>Well, Miles, Judge Posner and I are both white Chicagoan American Jewish
>atheist middle class lawyers, and we have different beliefs and actions .
>. . . So I am not sure how much help your answer is.
>
>jks
I think what Miles is getting at is what the sociologist would call the "non-obvious foundations of society" or what Durkheim called the "precontractual basis of solidarity") In order for you and Posner to have an argument at all, you have to share various beliefs. Those beliefs, you don't bother to dispute. They are just there but that they are there at all, makes it possible for you to disagree about some things. So, the example doesn't really address the issue. If you and Posner disagreed about _everything_, you wouldn't even bother to be around each other let alone argue over anything. (Of course, some people have tried to wed Freudian and Durkheimian thought, perhaps as a way to understand why some people persist in being around people with whom they, ostensibly, disagree with completely.)
Rational, contractual society, as both you and Miles seem to suggest, is always underpinned by non-rational, non-obvious ties of solidarity. The sociologist examines how those ties are formed and ritually enacted and re-enacted in order to form certain kinds of beliefs which we don't often articulate unless those tacit beliefs are called into question.
K (taking a break from cleaning up after the flooding--and it's raining again!)
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'