I think it is, that is reason not to give them any credence because they are caused and distorted by ideology. But social interests produced by various MOP may be truth conducive as well as truth distorting. Science, Marxism itself, are social products of a MOP. But the need for profit gives capitalists an interest in knowing the truth about nature, and workers an interest in knowing the truth about society. Hence Newton and Marx. I over simplify of course.
You correctly read my views as pragmatist. I'd call them that, anyway. It is true that many pragmatists, including some of the classical pragmatists -- James, Dewey, Meade -- were utilitarians, broadly. Consequentalists anyway. But Peirce wasn't. He was a neo-Kantian with a big splash of Hegel. Some modern pragmatists are utilitarians, Richard Posner. The biggest name in the neo-pragmatist political pantheon, Rawls, is decidedly not.
As I see pragmatism it is substantively neutral on the content of normative ethics. It doesn't come with a normative ethical theory built in, not even historically. It's not inherently utilitarian or Kantian or . . . . It provides a way of talking and thinking about how and whether one might adopt, assess, think about a normative ethics, that's all. It's likewise neutral on most of the big questions of philosophy as they are usually framed, maybe even hostile to that way of thinking. It's quite close, IMHO, to Marxism. Sidney Hook used to think so! Wrote a couple of first rate books explaining how and why.
--- On Sat, 12/13/08, Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
> From: Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Catholicism, was Re: blacks about as morally conservative as Republicans
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Saturday, December 13, 2008, 1:39 PM
> On Dec 13, 2008, at 2:15 PM, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > ...I say, utilitarianism is wrong because it could
> justify slavery if that maximized social welfare. The
> hard-boiled utilitarian says, Yes, and your point is? The
> HBU does not share my intuition that chattel slavery is
> morally wicked, period...
>
> Your "intuition" is purely a social product,
> reflecting the dominant ideology (prejudice if expressed as
> "intuition") of a society that has outgrown
> slavery. It claims the entitlement to pass moral judgment
> upon a whole epoch ("mode of production") of human
> history on the basis of contemporary moral ideology
> (prejudice).
>
> By the way, what basis does a "pragmatist" have
> to prefer or condemn *anything* except for its effects on
> human well-being ("social welfare")?
>
> Shane Mage
>
> > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> > kindling in measures and going out in measures."
> >
> > Herakleitos of Ephesos
>
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