Platt and all,
>Disagree, because "postrational" implies rationality is no longer needed
>in the "modern" age. If anything, what we need is a "rational morality"
>such as proposed by the MOQ where what is good and bad, right and
>wrong can be discussed within a rational (highly explanatory and
>meaningful) framework of moral evolutionary levels. Any suggestion that
>we should go "beyond" rationality is not only misguided, but
>dangerous. When a society discards standards of reason and defiles
>criteria for distinguishing facts from fictions and truths from falsehoods,
>what remains are arguments by ad hominem personal attacks and
>mindless struggles for power among groups by appeals to "solidarity."
I can't help but think this is directed towards me ;-)
In defense of solidarity, the pragmatist does not desire to go "beyond"
rationality. I don't even know what that means. Rationality is simply
contextualized. A post-Philosophical culture (which I assume would fall
under the society you were describing as discarding standards of reason and
criteria) doesn't discard standards or criteria. It simply acknowledges
the fact that when we appeal to reason, we are not appealing to some
ahistorical, universal Reason, but rather to a contingent tradition of
reasonable discourse. When a culture appreciates this fact it will stop
looking for the Truth as something to be matched up with and will instead
forge forward itself, playing off its past traditions and fixing them as
need be.
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