I suppose I don't believe they're completely consistent, or else there would be no reason (or ability, really) to critique the system itself, as feminists do, using radical critique from a position within the system.
I'm so glad you clarified this because that was going to be my next question.
I thought the math example might be useful. . . .
Actually it was more cumulative from everything you have been saying than just that particular example. I spent an embarrassingly long time with the comment reply window open writing and rewriting replies until something clicked. The example you gave didn't quite work because I always feel that basic arithmetic is actually founded in simple observation because that is how small children learn - by counting beans or whatever - and thus it is eminently testable. I had to go off and invent an example of my own using Pi (don't ask, I'm not a mathematician so I probably got it wrong anyway) and then come back and reread again.
Anyway, given all of which - vital question:
Whose language and reason?
Just your own, or a carefully chosen sample? And do you expect there to be differences between the language and reason of different individuals, since that would presumably result in different ethical truths. Are these categorical ethical truths only categorical for you in your own reference (which would bring us back to the problem of how to persuade others)? Or categorical for yourself and people with a sufficiently similar background (which I think is a perfectly legitimate position - we live in a society and much value is to be made of working with that particular society)? Or do you expect them to be categorical for every human being?
If you are sampling, how are you sampling? Whose work are you basing this on?
Do you expect these categorical ethical truths to stand for all time or will they change as language and reason develop? If you concede they change, at what rate do you think they change? Very fast - as fast as the understanding of an individual can change (you and I are not the same people as we were when we started this conversation because after the exchange of information we both now look at the world with slightly different perspectives etc.). Or very slow - at evolutionary speed which for most practical purposes is ahistorical. Or somewhere in between, at the speed that societies evolve.
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Date: 2008-04-27 06:38 am (UTC)I'm so glad you clarified this because that was going to be my next question.
Actually it was more cumulative from everything you have been saying than just that particular example. I spent an embarrassingly long time with the comment reply window open writing and rewriting replies until something clicked. The example you gave didn't quite work because I always feel that basic arithmetic is actually founded in simple observation because that is how small children learn - by counting beans or whatever - and thus it is eminently testable. I had to go off and invent an example of my own using Pi (don't ask, I'm not a mathematician so I probably got it wrong anyway) and then come back and reread again.
Anyway, given all of which - vital question:
Whose language and reason?
Just your own, or a carefully chosen sample? And do you expect there to be differences between the language and reason of different individuals, since that would presumably result in different ethical truths. Are these categorical ethical truths only categorical for you in your own reference (which would bring us back to the problem of how to persuade others)? Or categorical for yourself and people with a sufficiently similar background (which I think is a perfectly legitimate position - we live in a society and much value is to be made of working with that particular society)? Or do you expect them to be categorical for every human being?
If you are sampling, how are you sampling? Whose work are you basing this on?
Do you expect these categorical ethical truths to stand for all time or will they change as language and reason develop? If you concede they change, at what rate do you think they change? Very fast - as fast as the understanding of an individual can change (you and I are not the same people as we were when we started this conversation because after the exchange of information we both now look at the world with slightly different perspectives etc.). Or very slow - at evolutionary speed which for most practical purposes is ahistorical. Or somewhere in between, at the speed that societies evolve.