Karl, remember what I said abouit one extreme being as bad as another ?
You miss the enormous gulf between
"Not knowing" and "just guessing"
That space is full of valuable things like
"We make value judgements, educated by experience."
But yes - we should be establish those values by "dialogue", but we
should do it with the intent to "do something" with them as a basis
for saying it is better to this than that, etc. - once you have a
basis for values, not everything need be equal in every respect at all
times - separated only by numbers.
Ian
On 3/8/07, Karl Rogers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Ian,
> Please don't get cross, but another 1000 word lecture is coming your way....
>
> > Karl, you asked ...
> >
> > But how do we know whether we are injecting wisdom or folly?
> >
> >
> > We don't, that's the point of wisdom, knowing that we don't know.
> > We don't "know" anything do we ?
> That has been my point all along. What made Socrates wise is that he knew he
> did not know anything, at least, in the sense, he did not know anything that
> was permanently true. Now, of course, these days we all declare that there
> is no such truth (forgetting the paradox of such a statement, of course),
> but what we forget in our postmodern smugness is that this has important
> implications: all our knowledge is historically conditioned and contingent,
> it is tentative, speculative, and may well be shown to be false (incoherent
> or inadequate) in the future, and it involves cultural, subjective, and
> normative elements as well. Values and truths cannot be readily separated.
> Nor can we forget that all truths are intelligible and this means that we
> must not forget their psychological, situated aspects in relation to
> historically and culturally situated social and embodied beings. If we aim
> to develop wisdom-inquiry out of knowledge-inquiry then not only do we need
> to have a good hard look at how we obtain knowledge, but, unless we receive
> divine revelation, there is a we need to be very careful and almost
> bashfully modest about any claims to wisdom.
> We are almost certainly just guessing, every step of the way.
>
> >"We as a group of people concerned with wisdom will find at least some
> traits / qualities / >values we can agree are wiser than others .... just
> one will do ... and we have the courage >of our convictions to propose those
> (But we do not have the presumption that we are
> >"necessarily" right.)"
>
> Perhaps this is the best we can hope for. But I am not holding my breath.
>
> >We take a risk. We make sure we do it in a "fast failures / minimum
> >casualities" environment ... and we learn ... and we go round again.
> Again, we agree. I am just not sure that this is really all that compatible
> with talk of "wisdom". That does not detract from what you are saying. The
> problem may well be the consequence of cultural meanings that are associated
> with the word "wisdom". Perhaps it is an obstacle to better communication
> between us.
>
> This is one of the reasons why I thought that, perhaps as a preparation for
> a deeper conversation in the future, we should talk about our values and
> vision for how we envision an enhanced quality of life. At least, we would
> learn where each of us our coming from, just as you and I are learning more
> about each other. I know we have had some friction between us, but I also
> feel that you and I are now starting to respect each other.
> That is perhaps as close to progress as we -- as two human beings -- can
> hope to achieve on this email list. Perhaps I'm wrong. I hope not.
>
> Karl.
>
>
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