Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 11:35:55 -0400
Subject: Re: More on Modernism, Reason and Myth


I think that this thread may be about to die a natural death, but I want to
finish off two issues.

First, I found a great deal of common ground with Justin's last posting.
Maybe what Rahul fears as pragmatism in Justin is precisely where Justin and
I come together. I am still quite skeptical of the secularized Hegelianism
with which Justin notes an affinity, but I really don't see a great deal of
distance on the rest. Justin and I have what is becoming a pattern of
conversation, where we start off assuming a great distance and then find
ourselves a lot closer than we assumed. I need to say, for example, that I
was mistaken to attribute, in the unqualified way I did, a rational choice
position  to him. Maybe he could concede that my objections to modernist
conception of pure logic and  Reason is not an attack on logic and Reason in
general, but a critique of a very specific way of formulating logic and
Reason.
 
Second, Rahul makes the following point in objection to my claim that "one
might reasonably conclude that if the consensus of the
field for centuries was that analogy was a form of logic, there would at
least be a burden of proof on those who want to contend otherwise."

Rahul:
---------
How could I miss this before? This one is priceless, Leo. I suppose by the
same reasoning that the burden of proof is on me to show that god doesn't
exist, that Christianity is immoral, that witches can't really fly on
broomsticks, that the poor shouldn't be grateful to the rich for supporting
them, that women aren't inferior to men, that the best way to find out how
many teeth a horse has is to count them ...

Leo:
------
This is an interesting amalgam of some very diverse contentions. I would say
in a general way that it is axiomatic that a practical burden of proof falls
on those who challenge the governing consensus; the challenge may very well
be correct, but it must be proven. Some of the issues Rahul raises such as
the equality of sexes and and the non-existence of witches on broomsticks are
clearly issues which have been successfully challenged a long time ago. That
does not change the fact that in the 17th and 18th century a fierce battle
was fought over the existence of witches, and that those who challenged the
governing consensus had the burden of proof at that time. Today, the
consensus is quite different. Other issues, such as the existence of a God,
 are to my mind metaphysical questions which are not susceptible to logical
proof one way or the other. (Yes, I am an agnostic who accepts the limits of
human reason in many ways.) I don't even know what it means to say that
Christianity is immoral (Are we talking about the actions of the organized
churches? All of the organized churches? Are we talking about the theological
doctrine? What happens when the theological doctrine differ drastically from
sect to sect? On what ethical standards is Christianity immoral?), but it is
in any case an ethical judgment, and therefore, of a quite different order
than the existence of witches or whether or not analogies are part of logic.

Leo
 


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