Delete comment from: The Splintered Mind
> chinaphil: But on the whole I think we're strikingly lacking in sustained, committed workings out of where any particular moral theory would take us.
I think you are 100% correct. You might like Richard Posner's Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline. One of his evidence-based conclusions is that public intellectuals function more as entertainment than trustworthy, actionable information and wisdom. I might add, as a slightly-better-than-guess, that the lusting after 'revolution' pursued by so many intellectuals may also help explain this state of affairs: the attempt to thrust off tradition seems to inject much unpredictability.
Dr. Schwitzgebel, have you written on this topic? It is perhaps not enough on-topic for further discussion here, although I might say that the kinds of entities you imagine—if they do not exist, pace chinaphil—might require the kind of systematic adherence to theory which chinaphil describes. If so, then my opening remarks in this thread might make an interesting connection.
> Dr. Schwitzgebel: My perspective is that there's more diversity in the words that come out of people's mouths than in the reactions in their hearts, once you account for the different interests and group allegiences people have.
What reasoning or evidence do you have for this? (I realize that you might be going largely off of intuition, and don't mean to derogate that. I'm simply interested in investigating this matter further.) I was struck by a discussion by Steven D. Smith in The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse where he articulates John Rawls' idea of public reason: modern political liberalism, according to Rawls, must prohibit people from using "their hearts" (their "comprehensive doctrines") to influence politics and law (14–15). Lack of use in solidarity-seeking procedures would seem to lead to atrophy and/or divergence.
This is probably also too far off-topic, so I would consider some mere references supererogatory. :-)
Aug 14, 2015, 1:15:02 PM