“Investigators trying to determine whether access was illegal.” From the Columbus Dispatch:
State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about “Joe the Plumber.”
Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher became part of the national political lexicon Oct. 15 when Republican presidential candidate John McCain mentioned him frequently during his final debate with Democrat Barack Obama.
The 34-year-old from the Toledo suburb of Holland is held out by McCain as an example of an American who would be harmed by Obama’s tax proposals.
Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher’s driver’s license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate.
Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.
It has not been determined who checked on Wurzelbacher, or why. Direct access to driver’s license and vehicle registration information from BMV computers is restricted to legitimate law enforcement and government business.
Paul Lindsay, Ohio spokesman for the McCain campaign, attempted to portray the inquiries as politically motivated. “It’s outrageous to see how quickly Barack Obama’s allies would abuse government power in an attempt to smear a private citizen who dared to ask a legitimate question,” he said.
Isaac Baker, Obama’s Ohio spokesman, denounced Lindsay’s statement as charges of desperation from a campaign running out of time. “Invasions of privacy should not be tolerated. If these records were accessed inappropriately, it had nothing to do with our campaign and should be investigated fully,” he said.
The attorney general’s office is investigating if the access of Wuzelbacher’s BMV information through the office’s Ohio Law Enforcement Gateway computer system was unauthorized, said spokeswoman Jennifer Brindisi.
“We’re trying to pinpoint where it came from,” she said. The investigation could become “criminal in nature,” she said. Brindisi would not identify the account that pulled the information on Oct. 16.
[…]
On Oct. 17, BMV information on Wurzelbacher was obtained through an account used by the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency in Cleveland, records show.
Mary Denihan, spokeswoman for the county agency, said the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services contacted the agency today and requested an investigation of the access to Wurzelbacher’s information. Cuyahoga County court records do not show any child-support cases involving Wurzelbacher.
The State Highway Patrol, which administers the Law Enforcement Automated Data System in Ohio, asked Toledo police to explain why it pulled BMV information on Wurzelbacher within 48 hours of the debate, Hunter said.
The LEADS system also can be used to check for warrants and criminal histories, but such checks would not be reflected on the records obtained by The Dispatch.
Sgt. Tim Campbell, a Toledo police spokesman, said he could not provide any information because the department only had learned of the State Highway Patrol inquiry today.
No worries. I’m sure this will all be sorted out after the election — as will the investigations into voter fraud, and the release of the new book by Ayers and Dohrn letting us know that, in the post-partisan, post-racial world of Barack Obama, white supremacy is running rampant.
What I find most interesting — and simultaneously revolting, for its obviously smug double talk — is the statement by Obama’s Ohio spokesman Isaac Baker that the “campaign” had nothing to do with any invasion of privacy.
What Mr Baker likely can’t deny, however, is that Obama supporters — many of whom are likely tangentially related to Obama’s campaign in a non-official role (such as the volunteer members of his various “truth squads,” or his diehard supporters whom he’s implored to “get in people’s faces,” or those local Democratic bureaucrats and functionaries who are just doing their part to further the cause, or his press sycophants and enablers) — are almost certainly responsible, on the “grass roots” level, for the textbook Alinsky attack on Mr Wuzelbacher (“RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)).
To expand on the theme of my earlier post today, an Obama administration — being “progressives” (and so the contemporary, re-packaged, superficially softened incarnation of the “New Left” of which Ayers and co. were acknowledged leaders, internecine squabbling between Gitlin and the Weathermen offshoot of SDS notwithstanding) — have been schooled in these techniques, and will have at their disposal a system of institutions that have been patiently and incrementally primed for the success of authoritarian moves: from the “activist churches” so overtaken by the left that it is now considered a political offense to preach against abortion advocates, even as anti-abortion is a principle tenet of the religion in question; to the schools that disallow “giving offense” and push a multiculturalist worldview that grants provisional “authenticity” to those belonging to various identity groups (with the further charge that those folks adhere to the groups’ sanctioned narrative); to universities that have turned anti-intellectualism into the new intellectualism; to a substructural linguistic base for epistemology that has undercut Enlightenment values and principles by turning meaning into a purely subjective endeavor, opening the field of epistemology to pragmatism, power dynamics, majoritarian tyranny, and the will to power.
To fight back, we must, I believe (and have long argued), begin by taking back the principles for interpretation and meaning making, which involves the re-ascendancy of the speech act. This sounds far more complicated than it really is, but it involves a good deal of will, and the intellectual rigor to repeatedly denounce attempts to subjectify meaning so that interpretation can be used as a bludgeon against intentional agency put on the defensive by false charges.
What we have been witnessing, since the political implications of the linguistic turn have been carefully studied and gamed, is the “civilized”, “academic” version of witch hunts — with the burnings, drownings, and lynchings replaced by metaphorical equivalents: loss of credibility, character taint, the appearance of impropriety (generally, in accusations of “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” etc.).
This has all been carefully planned and implemented, and is — as I’ve long argued — the inevitable endgame for progressive politics and the philosophical assumptions and imperatives that underly the ideology.
By taking back language — the very thing that defines “truths” as man can articulate them, the very thing that frames “knowledge,” as man is capable of collecting it — we can take back the ground upon which meaning is decided upon. This need not be metaphysical; it could be nothing more than a return to the social contract built upon a rule of law wherein the law is decided upon based on a consensus opinion to appeal to the intent of the founders in whose politically experimental context we as a nation have agreed to operate.
Such a maneuver would make it far more difficult for identity politics and “multiculturalism” — the great balkanizing agents upon which progressivism depends — to survive logical scrutiny. It would turn the concept of a “Living Constitution” into unserious (and logically incoherent) mush; and it would reaffirm a common national social contract.
The election of Obama represents the opposite of all those ideals, just as progressivism, though it hides in the party that describes itself as “liberal,” is the precise antithesis of the classical liberalism upon whose precepts this country was founded.
To get back to celebrating and protecting the individual and individual rights, we must get back to respecting intent and appealing to it as a basis for securing a coherent epistemology.
Any thing else constitutes the poststructuralist’s vaunted and poet “drift” — the non-romantic upshot of which is that he who controls the ebb and flow of drift controls the paradigm, and so the power.
— None of which, I suspect, I’ll be talking about while I’m off shopping at Super Target. So I invite you to discuss it here.
(h/t moneyrunner)
Anybody using rule #12 on me gets goaded into touching me, at which point I start breaking things.
I’ve seen this already around here… the usual “don’t hire him, he is voting for that bitch” stuff.
McCain Palin voters are an extremely thin group here and when it comes to business, we stay way away from political conversation when amongst the rabid.
Plausible deniability is a beautiful thing, isn’t it Mr Baker?
Who are these investigators? It goes unsaid.
This is a fulcrum to which citizens ordinarily wouldn’t think it necessary to apply Alinsky’s rule 12 lever, but which is such — should these un-named “state and local officials” break our contract, deciding for themselves not to seek out, expose and prosecute wrongdoers (if any such are implicated) in Wurzelbacher’s case — that MikeyNTH’s observation that, paraphrasing here, “Alinsky’s tactics ought to be turned back upon the community organizers” would have a practical use and effect.
The greater the public outcry for a prompt, open and thorough inquiry, accompanied by a focus on the Government officials responsible, holding their feet to the fire, as it were, without tolerance for electoral season shilly-shallying and delay, the better the counter-message will be sent, in effect “You, Bureaucrat Person, with access to official information culled out and used against a citizen when that citizen speaks publicly in the course of life, You will be subject to immediate loss of your job and if possible, imprisonment, not merely for the offense you have committed against that individual citizen, but for the implied offense you have committed against every citizen. Intimidation tactics will not be tolerated in our polity, least of all where it regards attempts to silence political speech.”
Jeff, if the Lightbringer wins, it won’t be just language we’ll need to take back. You’ll need your best rubber gloves on to haul the country out of the crapper.
I have to admit: I’ve a signed picture of George Bush and his wife from prior to the 2000 election, still on my wall, in my office. At work.
After conducting an interview with a prospective employee, I casually draw attention to the photo, and offhandedly asked, “So, what about this guy?”
I’m expert at people-watching..comes with the job. I can tell in a fractional second what sort of person I’m dealing with. A nuanced, partially masked expression of, say, revulsion? Can’t hide that from me.
Did I mention that I’m in charge of hiring?
This may be the most important post you’ve ever crafted, Jeff. It describes the paradigm shift from “is” to “is to me.” The subjectivist imperative, the absense of a meta-truth beyond individual experience, has warped our ability to encounter one and other. The ends justify the means, because there is no ethical baseline to identify a behavior as foundationally wrong.
The bankrupt epistemology of experiencial truth leaves each of us as “other”, since co-experience is metaphysically impossible. So we are left with opinion “journalists” crafting explanations that what is true isn’t, what happened didn’t, and what we know isn’t.
So people as diverse as Noonan and Sullivan and Moore (Michael) can say with a straight face that they expect entirely different outcomes from the election of the same POTUS. The election of a fairly typical Christian conservative “Soccermom” as VP is more frightening to the average Obama voter than the election of a socialist ideologue who opinions and beliefs are indistinguishable from your garden-variety English prof from a state university.
When we gave up the attempt to understand the intent of the communicator, we rendered communication as ineffective as a monkey effing a football.
The subjectivist imperative, the absense of a meta-truth beyond individual experience, has warped our ability to encounter one and other. The ends justify the means, because there is no ethical baseline to identify a behavior as foundationally wrong.
Which goes hand in hand with the likes of Maher, Dawkins, et al (including nishi-kate) in mocking Sky God, Giant Spaghetti Monster …the we don’t need no stinking objective morality crowd. They need to make it so to cover for themselves.
Jeff, until you write the book I’m going to have to keep cut-and-pasting and printing these things into a binder. Sure I could save the to files on my computer but nobody blinks when a computer is seized and files are lost.
Similarly binder burning just doesn’t have the same resonance.
Wow, happyfeet, that NPR is working overtime for the One. Are they angling for an upgrade to Ministry of Truth come the coronation?
Great post Jeff G,
And a particularly good observation by Dale:
“…It describes the paradigm shift from “is†to “is to me.†The subjectivist imperative, the absense of a meta-truth beyond individual experience, has warped our ability to encounter one and other. The ends justify the means, because there is no ethical baseline to identify a behavior as foundationally wrong.
The bankrupt epistemology of experiencial truth leaves each of us as “otherâ€Â, since co-experience is metaphysically impossible. So we are left with opinion “journalists†crafting explanations that what is true isn’t, what happened didn’t, and what we know isn’t…”
This subjectivist imperative and epistimology of experiential truth are necessary underpinnings of the whole leftist progressive movement. To begin with, it is the intellectual basis for the entire doctrine of multi-culturalism; which lies at the root of identity politics. Also, it provides a firm basis for the existence of moral relativism; the “its all good” mindset. Together, all these elements are used as a divisive social wedge in our society. Instead of “E Pluribus Unum” we get a tribalist confederation…
But perhaps more insidious is the way it undermines the intent of our Constitution. Under these principles, there can no longer be any “Truths that we hold self-evident”. So, instead of being a collection of laws that we all agree to abide by, the Constitution is reduced to the experiencial bias, and notion of fairness of whatever judge happens to be interpreting it at the time.
Perhaps most ironic though, the progressives have taken to these principles, many developed as a result of the failed direct opposition attempt at revolution! during the 60’s, in order to bring about a social system that has been proven failed in the interim. And, if they succeed in gaining power through the employ of these ideas, how will they be able to consolidate their authority in a society where it’s all good. The only recourse would be for them to violate their own ideology, and to brutally repress all competing ones; it is a natural path to the fascism they have claimed that Booooooosh! has employed these past 8 years….
And the kind we have begun to see the stirrings of in Ohio…
So, I’m not sure how we can shape the discussion, and force the concepts back to a more empirical sense; one where meaning is based simply on the intent of the author and only deliberately, or artistically, ambiguous poetry is open to <interpretation by the reader.
But I’m with you all the way!
Best Wishes…
Yeah, I admit I thought this post would draw more attention.
Should have just stuck with the McCain cheerleading and shorter sentences with Hannityesque themes. That’s how you play this game, people!
See, Jeff, this is where you and I have a disagreement. Speech, words, don’t really matter to the left. Lies are absolutely acceptable if they advance their goals. The Arabic taquiya is probably closest.
Look at all the commenters, yourself included, who are worried that if they speak out, something bad will happen to them: assaulted, property destroyed, fired for no cause, etc. Do you think you’ll stop that with just words? Don’t think so.
In one sense overt action against us would be desireable compared to a gradual ostracism and marginalization. It would at least mark the dichotomy and expose our legitimacy, if as nothing greater than that of an opposition to the new status quo.
Yeah, I admit I thought this post would draw more attention.
Well, there is a troll shitting on the carpet in your latest post. I prefer this one.
I think you miss the point. I don’t hope to stop anything with “just words.” I seek to re-establish an epistemological paradigm that has been systematically weakened by a variety of incoherent linguistic premises.
In other words, I want to correct the flaws in the substructure. From there, the rest will take care of itself.
No doubt this is strictly true – however, as we have seen again and again, the press has been part of Obama’s campaign. As such, it will be incredibly difficult to regain any honesty in the language itself, given the corrupt nature of the purveyors of this language. You have one hard row to hoe.
So Jeff G,
How do you propose we go about retaking the epistimological high ground, and return the intellectual property of intent back to the author?
I’m with you Bro, but not nearly as eloquent; and lacking the forum, or vision, can’t see the way to get there…
Just askin’
Best Wishes…
I don’t think the way there is simply through more McCain cheerleading…
The change jeff seems to be looking towards won’t have a return in our generation.
It’s is about rebuilding context for the future.
One funny thing about the reality based community is how fuzzy their definition of reality gets… it is about how they feel reality should be.
I feel I should have more money, but I don’t feel I should have to work long hard hours and be innovative for it.
I feel I should be paid more because my self esteem/narcissism tells me so. I should be paid very well for attending work, because everyone there gets to be around me. Production and accomplishment are secondary to my presence…
Then there are the new facts. well, they aren’t like the old facts that were actually true. The new facts are fuzzy too and have become very subjective to the narrative and are replaced by beliefs.
The belief that the wellspring of racism flows out of whites first and then is reflected out onto blacks, browns becomes fact because a peer reviewed paper says so, or because a young Illinois state Senator reviews the nonsense and describes it as searing. Ah… it must be true, the former editor of the Harvard Law Review said so.
I hope students get fed up and revolt. Look a professor in the eye and say “Bullshit. Quoting some dipshit marxist asshole who published peer reviewed nonsense doesn’t make a fact, it makes you, his/her peers look like sycophants and idiots. I refuse to be educated by intellectually dishonest morons” and then transfer to a school where honesty and integrity demand real facts be taught.
The change jeff seems to be looking towards won’t have a return in our generation.
Yes. It’ll be a long march through the institutions, or perhaps routing around the institutions.
Knock the Proggs’ linguistic house of cards out from under them? I like it.
Apparently, meya thinks it’s a good time to change the subject.
To fight back, we must, I believe (and have long argued), begin by taking back the principles for interpretation and meaning making, which involves the re-ascendancy of the speech act. This sounds far more complicated than it really is, but it involves a good deal of will, and the intellectual rigor to repeatedly denounce attempts to subjectify meaning so that interpretation can be used as a bludgeon against intentional agency put on the defensive by false charges.
I worry about the intellectual rigor part of it. Because, doesn’t it demand rigor from the other side of the isle? With the BUSH LIED PEOPLE DIED group? They’ve been dumbed down by 7 years of hate.
That’s some pretty weak beer you’re offering there, meya. You couldn’t back it up with a shot of oude genever, could you?
But lets learn the lesson, and learn it well. If Joe the Plumber is going to represent everyman, lets broaden it make sure we all get our privacy, not just the guy Mccain talks about.
You just have to marvel at the ability to write something like this, the sort of thought process that can take an immoral act taken against a supporter of McCain and turn it into a criticism of McCain. It’s really sort of fabulously evil, isn’t it? Oh well, ends, means and all that.
I’m here in OH. Who needs to be whacked? Give me the word. I know Mary Denihan very well. Funny to see her name in Protein Wisdom. She will not be whacked as she is very good people. All joking aside, even O! sycophants must be chagrined at this. Too many things happening like this for it to be any good for this guy.
meya
Do NOTE that one of the ‘breakins’ was from a “test account” within the IT department of the AG’s office.
all the security apparatus in the world is not as important as an honest, moral person.
and in case that sails over your head meya
the Left eschews objective morality as “old fashioned”, based on “irrational” belief in a “sky god”, yadda yadda yadda…
integrity is doing the right thing when no one’s looking …and Camp Obama has never had more than a cup or two of integrity
“I wouldn’t think this a good week to be pinning on the campaign the actions of lawbreaking supporters and volunteers.”
It’s the best week of all to remind voters that Obama and his ostensible handlers are empty suits, incapable of imposing any kind of discipline on the thugs that back him.
Doesn’t anyone wonder that the origins of our epistemological uncertainty are in fact genuine, serious problems we must continue to address? It is not as though we have solved in every detail the physical structures of the human mind, its operations, its in-built capacities and incapacities. We (in our science and thus, our knowing) have a long way yet to go, do we not? We want to begin with human nature, we sometimes say, as we decide how our politics ought to be, what our politics ought to look like. And yet……
Yet in the meantime, we ground our assumptions on what, exactly? And the question is not meant to invoke a raft of theoretical positions, to be defended or abandoned willy-nilly in a political context in a political season. Rather, to whom/what do we point in agreement, saying “Yeah, that guy (or group) really has it right about human cognition, we are persuaded by them beyond all the others”? Or, “That view of human nature is by far more complete, more well integrated, more consistent with the known phenomena, better able to account for and even, in rare cases predict human behavior, than any of these others on offer.”
And do we then, having satisfied ourselves that at the least, we are more or less on the “right track” with regard to grasping human nature, having a firm grasp of the next question to be approached in that field, do we then double-back and inquire how well whatever limited politics we have already created squares with the new tale we tell about our human-ness? How well with the gaps in our knowledge, how well with the results of that politics we see before our eyes, so to speak?
Sdferr,
Rather, to whom/what do we point in agreement, saying “Yeah, that guy (or group) really has it right about human cognition, we are persuaded by them beyond all the othersâ€Â? Or, “That view of human nature is by far more complete, more well integrated, more consistent with the known phenomena, better able to account for and even, in rare cases predict human behavior, than any of these others on offer.â€Â
Sometimes, it’s easier to take the negative approach – you can look at a position, or ideology, and say ” Well, hell, that ain’t right!”
I just want to be able to call a spade a club without being harassed for using spade.
God bless Iowahawk from where I sit. Would that his fellow Iowans were to think more like him, rather than like the empty-headed Obama.
However, I’m getting at my own sense that my understanding of human kind has yet to be integrated with my understanding of politics, I guess, and that I sense that a reconciliation of the two has yet to be accomplished. I do not know with certainty, but I do suspect that I am not alone in occupying this position. Further, that the reconciliation I hope for, or expect must take place eventually, really, as necessary to the health of science and politics alike, will not be easy and will require a profound dedication to both those enterprises and to men.
In the meantime, I believe we have much yet to learn about ourselves.
(dre, do that to your bridge partner without a convention-agreement before the game begins and awful things can happen.)
Bull, Sdferr. You are making the mistake the people you question make, and it inevitably leads to the same thing: indecision, uncertainty, and relativism.
Run and find out is the motto of the mongoose tribe, Kipling tells us. Run and find out, and try it and see, are the only possible ways to proceed. We need to tell the philosophers, OK, you’ve clearly got a hard job there, and you haven’t been making much progress. We’ve got a world to run and lives to live. Get back to us when you’ve got something useful, eh?
Semanticleo the other day was sneering at the engineering mentality. You know why? Because engineers aren’t philosophers. They can’t be. The bridge falls down, or not; the machine fails or runs; the Law of Gravity isn’t subject to amendment; the Laws of Thermodynamics can’t be broken. This works, and that does not. If it works, do it again. If it doesn’t, do something else. The philosophers have thrown up their hands and admitted defeat; they cannot find an absolute to ground action on. Very well. In the absence of absolutes, go with what has worked in the past.
It remains to define goals. For me, the proper goal is the inclusion of the maximum number of people (in the limit, all people) in the prosperous, relatively tolerant, old-fashioned liberal system, With Liberty and Justice for All. The task is then to go back and look at what has brought people into that system and what has not, and to emphasize the former at the expense of the latter.
Pragmatism has a bad name because so many people have interpreted it to mean “violence always works”. We need to get over that. Pragmatism — go with what works, stop doing what doesn’t work — is the only way ahead. And it is profoundly, almost definitionally, conservative.
Regards,
Ric
Jeff G, I don’t even know where to begin with the task you have described. Can you point the way?
But lets learn the lesson, and learn it well. If Joe the Plumber is going to represent everyman, lets broaden it make sure we all get our privacy, not just the guy Mccain talks about.
You first, meya. Because, we played the democrats game this election (attack ads, yada yada yada) and look where it got us. The Dems have got a nice trick up their sleeve. Demand a certain behavior, accuse the other of failing to meet thier OWN standard, all the while treating said standard like a two dollar whore.
Ric, I don’t expect engineers to be philosophers. Indeed, any more, I’m not sure I expect philosophers to be philosophers, at least in the absurd metaphysical sense that they have been thought to be the last four or five centuries or so. Invoking the laws of thermodynamics is perhaps one among a few other of the best ways to begin, it seems to me. Pragmatism is fine with me, it has to be, does it not? I don’t go for skyhooks and spooky/airy fairy explanations when I look for explanations of human behavior. So you might say I expect philosophers to be engineers, if you take my meaning. If they can’t do that at least, I think, what the hell can they do?
Take Haidt’s thesis on politics for instance. How many people believe that their ratiocinations on policy are in fact ex post facto pastiches, peacocks plumage iow, stuck onto pre-existing moral sentiments formed early in their lives in circumstances they have never for a moment stopped to examine? Not many, I’ll wager. But what if, hypothetically of course, Haidt turns out to be correct? Will we see a concomitant diminution of the rationalizing blather performed for the sake of the crowd, and in its place, a straightforward assertion of the underlying moral sentiment goading the policymaker to act? Ought we to?
Semanticleo the other day was sneering at the engineering mentality. You know why? Because engineers aren’t philosophers. They can’t be. The bridge falls down, or not; the machine fails or runs; the Law of Gravity isn’t subject to amendment; the Laws of Thermodynamics can’t be broken.
I have been kind of absent here the past two weeks because I was working on a slip-form concrete pour of a feed mill. 5500 yards of concrete placed around the clock, a 175 foot mill and six 150 foot silos from the ground up in thirteen days. I couldn’t get on the ‘net, so I was forced to rely on newspapers and was shocked at the piss poor quality of the writing. Regardless of the political bias, notice the lack of professionalism just in the writing itself.
It struck me that if engineers designed built roads and buildings with the same slack ass attitude journalists construct sentences and paragraphs, we would all be in jail.
Zero quality control in the news precincts, B Moe. Can you imagine the results of slump tests performed on the output of Mo Dowd, for instance?
#42
Sdferr
There’s a couple bad jokes in there… but I held back.
[…] SITREP 2008– “What we have been witnessing, since the political implications of the linguistic turn […]
Oh come on, Maureen never let a that stop her, SG!
Can you imagine the results of slump tests performed on the output of Mo Dowd, for instance?
Slump tests aren’t valid on non-cohesive material. The air content, on the other hand…
I’m still seething over the ‘elite pundits’ who’ve turned on Sarah Palin.
It’ll be a cold day in hell before I give a glance to Hitchens, Buckley, Noonan, Parker, Brooks.
And Powell? Who said he was ever a conservative in the first place? We must’ve been desperate for company, or something.
Sdferr, philosophers used to claim they were engineering-oriented. Indeed, philosophers claim to be searching for the meaning of Life, the fundamental principles from which the All proceeds; the ethical, social, principled Theory of Everything. If they were successful, it would then be easy to proceed from that to the construction of societal principles, just as B Moe takes the characteristics of concrete and proceeds from there to build things.
In case you hadn’t noticed, roughly three centuries ago some of them threw up their hands, said the Hell with it, and split “Natural Philosophy” off as what we now call “Science”. The remainder continued in their search for Meaning, elaborating, inventing, and just plain lying from time to time. They keep coming up with theories, the latest being “relativism” in many guises. What may not be apparent among all the big words is that thay, too, have given up. Relativism itself is a confession that they’ve come up empty in their search, and concluded that since there is no fundamental Meaning, nothing means anything. I don’t remember which cynic it was who summarized it as Those who believe in nothing, believe in anything.
Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent
Philosopher and poet, and heard great argument
About it and about, but ever came
Out by the same Door where in I went.
So it is best that the rest of us just leave them to it. Keeping philosophers around is relatively cheap — food, shelter, and the ability to communicate is all they really need to do their work — and the payoff if they should succeed in their quest would be immense, so it’s worth the investment. Sort of the inverse of Voltaire, eh?
In the meantime, pragmatism (or its more-complex superior, hedonism) is the way to go. This has worked in the past; perhaps it can be improved to work better in future. This has not worked in the past, despite being attempted many times in many variants; discard it and don’t try it again. Engineering.
Regards,
Ric
Ric, see Churchland, Paul or Patricia, or Dennett, for the sort of philosophers I’m pointing at and the sort I’m still willing to read. I’m well aware of the split but beginning to wonder if a general repair of the fissure isn’t in the offing. I may not even be aware of the sort of people who would populate the universe of philosophers you are referring to as “relativists”, but then I’m kinda reductionist that way.
Let’s not forget John Locke.
To say it another way maybe, I’m content nowadays to think of human beings as animals and even in a sense, as machines (much as that would have offended my former self lo thirty years ago). But something seems to make us tick (or in my case, get out of bed in the morning) and I’m still curious what that something is and how it meshes with the worlds we create.
“Semanticleo the other day was sneering at the engineering mentality. You know why? Because engineers aren’t philosophers. They can’t be. The bridge falls down, or not; the machine fails or runs; the Law of Gravity isn’t subject to amendment; the Laws of Thermodynamics can’t be broken. This works, and that does not. If it works, do it again. If it doesn’t, do something else. The philosophers have thrown up their hands and admitted defeat; they cannot find an absolute to ground action on. Very well. In the absence of absolutes, go with what has worked in the past.
It remains to define goals. For me, the proper goal is the inclusion of the maximum number of people (in the limit, all people) in the prosperous, relatively tolerant, old-fashioned liberal system, With Liberty and Justice for All. The task is then to go back and look at what has brought people into that system and what has not, and to emphasize the former at the expense of the latter.”
Amen brother Ric, Amen…
The reason that the “philosophers have thrown up their hands and admitted defeat” is because they have the luxury of suffering defeat. People look to those of us in engineering and the science to produce things that work. In the absence of something that works better than the status quo, you stick with what you have alredy got! Which is why you are entirely correct when you assert that, most often, pragmatism is necessarily conservative…
The current political environment, where O! and Co advocate a return to a system that has been proven to be a failure, and selling by a change in semantics and the duplicity of the legacy media, is absolutely maddening to those of us who share your thought processes…
Introspection, assessment, and re-examination is generally useful. But not if you stack the analysis a priori, nor if you engage in willfull self-delusion. As the bard said, “…What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet…”
or
“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I would call it a duck…”
Hopefully come election day, most people will have realized that O! is simply quacking much more mellifluously than the other ducks…
Best Wishes…
And if they don’t? Aye, but there’s the rub.
Sdferr,
I Haidt is correct, it is the best argument against a state run pre-K program a thinking person could make…
Also, in answer to your question, If it were widely accepted, and verified somehow, such that it became CW-so to speak, then I would expect that it would cut down on the blather…
Personally though, I think that while providing a base outlook, such early life experiences would always me malleable through concious effort and critical thinking…
But I’m neither philosopher nor psychologist, just a humble engineer…
Best Wishes…
“It struck me that if engineers designed built roads and buildings with the same slack ass attitude journalists construct sentences and paragraphs, we would all be in jail.”
Right on, BMoe…
Would you agree that perhaps there needs to be a form of journalistic malpractice, since they’re pretty much unassailable otherwise from a legal point of view…
I mean they are educated professionals, aren’t they?
Best Wishes…
Sdferr,
All I can do is hope that the truth about O! becomes self-evident by election day…
That would be change I could believe in!
But until then I keep prayin’…
Best Wishes…
#41
There’s more oversite with engineers than with journalists. from the drsftsman(autocad technician)to the shop floor. If you’re full of shit. somebody will tell you.
My wife got out of the technical publishing/editing business. Too many so called technical writers were technilogically illiterate.
I agree with you there Bob, though I’m not precisely sure of the scope or extent of the plasticity of underlying structures, some movement must be possible. We see it happen, in ourselves, our friends and acquaintances. It takes time and a lot of work to see it through though, and often enough, it appears to me, some indeterminate external event/s to set it off.
Sdferr,
I agree that there is always a thought provoking external event. And for thinking people who are intellectually honest this leads directly to the reshaping of those plastic underlying structures you spoke of.
I get at the answer to that je ne said quoi through my theology and attendant spirituality. I find that it doesn’t collide with the prevailing scientific cosmology and get’s me through rough p-atches where I may wonder at the seeming futility of my actions…
You sound like you’ve read quite a bit of philosophy though. I studied it a bit in college, but never had the time for more than 101 and 201 kind of courses…
Best Wishes…
oooops!
je ne said quoi = je ne sais quoi
Sorry…
I think it was Leo Strauss, but may have been Jacob Klein, who used to maintain that a genuine philosopher only comes around once every couple of thousand years or so, that mostly we mistake sophists for the real deal. In any case, they’re rare, cause even if we added up all the stooges like Descartes, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx et al we’ve civilisationally (if I can use that word) traipsed off after on one wild goose chase after another you still wouldn’t have enough people to run a medium sized modern business enterprise, let alone something on the order of NASA in its heyday.
Yes. And that is to insist, with no equivocation, “that is not what I meant” each and every time someone misinterprets you.
If the fault was yours for being unclear, say so. But point out that your failure to adequately convey what you intended doesn’t negate the intention, and so the meaning.
Never concede anything more. And always find out from your interlocutor what it was, specifically, that caused the misunderstanding. It may turn out that it was their biases and preconceptions — not your communication — that was at fault. At which point you let them know that if they wish to communicate intelligently, they should pay attention to what you mean, not to what they have convinced themselves you could mean.
Then, smack them in the head with a book by J.L. Austin.
Bob, I don’t know what you said.
[…]
Oh.
…and when it’s going the other way, always insist, and just how is that supposed to work? What’s the mechanism?
We’re generally at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the Progs, because the underlying theory (or better, theology) of communitarianism is nice. We’re always the spoilsports, the meanies, the ones who insist that there be money in the checking account before we make reservations in Nice.
Trouble is, there is no record anywhere, from any time, of communitarianism of any stripe yielding the benefits it promises, and the system we espouse (called “capitalism” or “liberal individualism”, depending on your compression ratio) has in fact provided those benefits, and more. Is there anyone here who thinks Bill Ayers gave back Daddy’s credit card when he was running around trying to blow stuff up?
So hit ’em up. A chicken in every pot, you say? Shiiiiny! I’m so down with that! So, where will the chickens come from?
In most cases it will be futile. Maturity is a completely different concept from either education or age, and of the many impossibilities in society, compelling maturity is near the top of the list. It may be that it is entirely futile, that a wealthy industrial civilization cannot persist because its citizens become increasingly infantilized by the abundance around them and cannot be taught that “I waaaaaant it!” is not a Law of the Universe. If so, I’m sorta glad I’m old, and I feel sorry for you young folk.
Regards,
Ric
Why, from the egg
fairyalternative-lifestyle person, of course.Well said Ric,
I have to have confidence though, that the demise of easy credit will signifigantly hasten the end of the instant gratification society…
Now as for the parasitic, communitarian, society…That may be a bit more difficult!
You know what de Tocqueville said:
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
But he also said:
“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
So we got that goin’ for us at least…
Best Wishes…
McGeehee,
Is that alternative-lifestyle person laying the eggs, or getting laid for the eggs…?
Jus’ curious…
I can’t get from the cab to the curb
without some little jerk on my back
— Pretenders
technologically, stupid wine
Isn’t Toledo run by the guy who wouldn’t let the Army run training exercises there?
Is Toledo run? I didn’t know. I mean, passed through there once and it didn’t look run.
Wow. Not only an illiterate, but a spammer too?
Yer mama must be so proud.