Re: MD When is a metaphysics not a metaphysics?

From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Sat Dec 13 2003 - 11:10:32 GMT

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    Dear Matt K.,

    You wrote 9 Dec 2003 19:49:40 -0600:
    'Part of writing the narrative is figuring out all the pieces of the puzzle,
    all the little innovations that have accumulated and allowed us here in the
    21st century to suggest something different from Plato, Descartes, and
    Kant.'

    Yes, and you can't describe 'little cumulative innovations' as (different)
    answers to yes/no questions. So implicitly you DO need the underlying
    epistemological, ontological and meta-ethical questions to describe these
    innovations in a way enabling them to be compared.

    I agree that 'saying something particular, like about a true statement or a
    good action or a piece of common sense' is in the end more important than
    discussing metaphysics and 'how things hang together'. The problem is, that
    'we' appear not to be able to reach any sort of agreement ('we' being
    primarily Americans among themselves...?!) about the truth of a particular
    statement, the quality of a particalar action or whether something is really
    common-sensical. Neo-pragmatism may be very right that metaphysics and
    philosophy in general have done a poor job until now in enabling 'us' to
    reach more agreement (on the basis of the assumption that FIRST agreeing on
    answers to metaphysical questions would better enable us to reach agreement
    about the things that really matter). The point is however, that I don't see
    neo-pragmatism offering a better way to reach agreement between say liberals
    and conservatives yet.

    By the way: you have been writing relatively little about 'something
    particular' yourself. You usually keep out of the more concrete political
    discussions on this list.

    With friendly greetings,

    Wim

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