[lbo-talk] Obama's betrayal of hope

shag carpet bomb shag at cleandraws.com
Thu Dec 3 16:24:48 PST 2009


At 01:19 PM 12/3/2009, Carrol Cox wrote:


>SA wrote:
> >
> > Carrol Cox wrote:
> >
> > > When no fundamental assumptions are shared, debate is pointless.
> > >
> >
> > In other words, you only want to talk to people who agree with you.
> >
>
>Asshole. Do you identify "fundamental assumptions" with "complete bleif
>systems"? I have a hard time understandng why this simple point is so
>hard to grasp. It has been commnpace at least since Aristotle, and
>probably since Homer.
>
>Carrol

This is a basic insight from sociological research as well. You cannot have a disagreement at all without shared assumptions -- which can be as basic as language, of course. IT's sort of like axioms in logic.

It's the same principle behind the non-engagement of anti-feminist men at feminist blogs. if the feminist blogger/community wants to speak to higher order issues, where they debate things that require that fundamental assumptions are agreed to first. You can actually get into a good debate if what you're doing is always having to stop to debate first principles. That doesn't mean that you never ever consider first principles. That's one reason why a group of feminist bloggers opened up Feminism 101. There, they do engage anti-feminist men when they ask foundational questions. At the "advanced" blog, they talk about things like whether Sean Bell is a feminist issue, whether there can be a rapprochement between sex positive feminists and radical feminists, if there can be feminist pornography, etc.

shag

-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)



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