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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
If nobody can be unbiased or 'objective,' would you say that it makes sense to believe that NOTHING really matters but PR? In other words, if the truth is truly unaccessible go for power.
15 posted on 08/08/2005 8:30:23 AM PDT by Blind Eye Jones
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To: Blind Eye Jones; redgolum
If nobody can be unbiased or 'objective,' would you say that it makes sense to believe that NOTHING really matters but PR? In other words, if the truth is truly unaccessible go for power.
I think that might be the Nietzschean view; redgolum's tag line suggests that possibly he might elucidate that point.

But that is not what I believe, nor what I meant. The Bible will tell you not to be arrogant; "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." If you and I dispute an issue, and you insist a priori that you are objective, and that all further discussion must take that as a starting point, you are arrogant. You are in fact a Sophist - a claimer of wisdom.

If I take a philosophical view ("philo" = brotherly love + "sophy" = of wisdom), I claim only that I love wisdom - and will listen to reason - rather than that I am wise - and have no need to trouble myself listening to your arguments. To take the philosophical view does not deny the existence of wisdom (far from it) but it does rule out arguing from a claim of wisdom.

Of course for the philosophical view to admit the existence of wisdom, it must allow and insist on there being a conclusion to argument; if the sophist cannot win with a reasonable standard of proof he is likely to demand an ever higher standard of proof rather than to admit defeat.


16 posted on 08/08/2005 9:55:24 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)
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