"Mark Steyn doesn't understand anything, which is sort of a redundant statement."No. It's a repugnant statement.
And the reason for that is that although Steyn may not have the same reading as Turton on the implications of the Taiwan Relations Act, he at least understands the difference between limited and unlimited government. Which Turton, died-in-the-wool commie Pragmatist that he is, does not understand.
Is that a "redundant" statement? I wish it was.
Amen to that.
ReplyDeleteMichael Turton (whom I have actually met a couple of times) used to be more moderate. He used to have a great deal of respect for the people "on the other side of the aisle." Turton has gotten worse and worse over the years.
According to you, if I recall correctly, it is the influence of people like Bruno Walther who have done that. I blame the man himself, and the whole "liberal,"/leftist/progressivist element.
Michael Fagan, I do, however, take issue with your broad-stroke painting of "pragmatism." Pragmatism, at least the label, and some of its adherents, seems to have been given an unjustly bad rap by libertarians. I wouldn't say that Charles S. Peirce and Spinoza deserve to be crucified. Ayn Rand made a to-do about Dewey (probably justifiably, given the evidence she points to and the references to his ideas which she solidly demolished. However, I doubt she read Peirce, and her simply mentioning him without actually pointing to his ideas seems obtuse and unfair.
"Michael Turton ... used to be more moderate. "
ReplyDeleteI have defended Turton from false charges before, and will do this whenever I can, but in this case Thoth I think you are wrong only in that you misidentify what changed. I doubt he changed much, at least not in respect of the ideological basics. These days people can appear more extreme than say, in the mid 1990s, as the distant peel of consequences to the extand Statist political economy gets louder and louder. The appearance of "moderation" was at least partly illusory because, however much it may be pretended or otherwise sublimated with pragmatist rationalizations, there is a logic to the consequences of ideas in action - which is what the term "ideology" refers to and which is what embarassed the moderates on either side. But as I said, the rumbling is getting louder: the question as to what type of social bonds - voluntary or hegemonic - leads to what outcomes is being answered in peel after peel of consequence: and both ideas and people are required in order to attribute explanatory blame. And we can't both be right.
"According to you, if I recall correctly, it is the influence of people like Bruno Walther who have done that."
Actually Thoth, I think it's far more likely that any "influence" ran in the other direction - Bruno suffered from the ignorance that comes with over-specialization. Turton's interests are far broader (and perhaps deeper too).
"However, I doubt she read Peirce, and her simply mentioning him without actually pointing to his ideas seems obtuse and unfair."
Thoth: you make the same mistaken assumption everyone else makes about me - you know how many of Rand's books I've read? One.
I read Pierce myself.
Mike Fagan: "You make the same mistaken assumption everyone else makes about me - you know how many of Rand's books I've read? One."
ReplyDeleteI knew this already - you've mentioned it at some point before. I wasn't making this assumption, although I can understand why you say this, since I mentioned Rand in the context of this disussion. She says most of the same things as you do, however.
Well, let's deal with the thing itself Thoth...
ReplyDeletePierce's pragmatic maxim states that in order to think properly about something (e.g. some course of action), one must pay regard to the conceivable practical consequences - and then those consequences shall be the whole point with everything else dismissed (I can't remember the quote word-for-word and I no longer have my old copy of his Harvard Lectures, but, checking with wikipedia I think that's about right).
Hayek's observation that unintended consequences are often also unforeseen ought to be enough to refute Pierce (and Tom Sowell makes a similar point about the distributed nature of consequential knowledge).
However, we can do better than that. Consider: what are the conceivable consequences of freedom, Thoth?
Either we say that no particular consequences can be inferred from the notion of freedom itself and that, to arrive at such consequences, we require other notions such as wealth to perform an intermediary function... or... we say that freedom can result in unlimited consequences either for good or for bad.
Given these two choices under Pierce's maxim, the inevitable result is that any appeal to "freedom" by itself is essentially meaningless drivel since it cannot be pinned down to definite practical consequences.
That is why Taiwan's intellectuals do not defend the Wang family in Taipei with a robust insistence on the inviolability of property rights, but instead, a mere appeal to the more careful weighing of consequences by the government.
That is the practical consequence of Pragmatism.
Oh I forgot to add...
ReplyDeleteThere was a comment thread at Turton's place on the Miaoli farmers two years ago (before I was banned) where Turton basically made the same appeal to a more careful weighing of consequences. And there have been other instances in which his Pragmatism has caught the light. That's the thing to understand about Turton: he's a Pragmatist.
"Either we say that no particular consequences can be inferred from the notion of freedom itself and that, to arrive at such consequences, we require other notions such as wealth to perform an intermediary function... or... we say that freedom can result in unlimited consequences either for good or for bad."
ReplyDeleteHmm, this sounds like the very prescription for the kind of world you see in Philip K. Dick's The Simulacra. One really wonders what the point is of actually having a time-machine in such a world when we ignore facts and warp the past, present, and future. Everybody is of unsound mind. Oh yeah, and let's bring Herman Goering back from the past to advise the President.
On a completely different note, however, I sincerely wish Philip K. Dick's real life political beliefs had been a tad more coherent. His novels would have been genius or beyond genius, as opposed to near genius, as they are. As I say, they are great, but they tend to lack something. Even the movies that are based on them reveal something incomplete and slightly amorphous. The mind itself was brilliant but the works were slightly short of it.
He really should have worked out the psychological and social issues he was working out in his first and unpublished novel, Voices From the Street(now published, of course. It's a horrifying experience to read. It's nonetheless totally engaging and fascinating, as well.
"One really wonders what the point is of actually having a time-machine in such a world when we ignore facts and warp the past, present, and future."
ReplyDeleteI'm not following you Thoth... are you saying I'm ignoring facts and "warping the past, present and future" in my account of what Pierce's pragmatic maxim means? Or is that a comment on PKD's novels?
I'm obviously commenting on the people in the world of PKD's novel having been oblivious to the results of the pragmatic maxim - and to logic in toto.
ReplyDeleteSorry Thoth... I'll go to my default of accepting blame for the misunderstanding - I often seem to have difficulty detecting whether there is sarcasm and whether it is directed at me or not (perhaps because I'm not familiar with PKD's novels).
ReplyDelete"...having been oblivious to the results of the pragmatic maxim - and to logic in toto."
See I can't tell if this is sarcasm or self-deprecation. If it's sarcasm, then please explain why I am wrong about Pierce's pragmatic maxim.
"I can't tell if this is sarcasm or self-deprecation" Mike, it is neither. It isn't sarcasm, either. Reread what I wrote. I always say what I mean.
ReplyDeleteI am rarely, if ever, sarcastic in any of my internet writings. Frankly, I just don't see the point of being sarcastic when you can be straight with people. I find internet sarcasm totally annoying.