[lbo-talk] science, objectivity, truth, taste and tolerance

ravi gadfly at exitleft.org
Wed Oct 4 12:05:38 PDT 2006


At around 4/10/06 11:53 am, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> Now the radical skepticism that ravi is practicing is sufficient to deny
> _any_ claim to knowledge, scientific, pre-scientific, what have you.
>

You are exactly wrong in your careful choice of the word "practising", since the radical scepticism is not what I practise, but is what I [wish to] demonstrate as the logical consequence of the sort of scepticism that is celebrated. In this instance, as most others, the prefix "radical" is a meaningless distinction: e.g: "the radical left". The real worthwhile practise, as PKF notes, is quite the opposite of a paralysing scepticism: a generous anarchism.


> And
> the best answer usually to radical skepticism is not Dr. Johnson's stone
> but merely changing the subject. It is not worth arguing because nothing
> follows from it.

Oh come on... don't take your bat and go home! We'll even let you bat an extra turn! And I promise I won't bad mouth American authors for at least 6 months even if they are compared Chekhov or Tolstoy. ;-)

--ravi

-- Support something better than yourself: ;-) PeTA: http://www.peta.org/ GreenPeace: http://www.greenpeace.org/ If you have nothing better to do: http://platosbeard.org/



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