Democracy & the Unreasonable: Lessons from Rawls

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Philosophy Now
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Democracy & the Unreasonable: Lessons from Rawls

Post by Philosophy Now »

Francisco Mejia Uribe asks if democracy can overcome fundamentalism.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/122/Democracy_and_the_Unreasonable_Lessons_from_Rawls
Belinda
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Re: Democracy & the Unreasonable: Lessons from Rawls

Post by Belinda »

Thanks Philosophy Now for the essay based upon the political philosophy of John Rawls linked to in post #1.

Liberals are not entirely without ammunition in a fight for right where unreasoned antagonists are metatasized throughout the society. We have human sympathy to fall back on .Human sympathy as symbol and as manifested is augmented by mass communications, to an extent unknown in the nineties. We also have arts and artists who are still not swept away by metastases of unreason. Perhaps foremost among the arts is free reportage.

Unreason , unlike reason, has little interest in historical symbols of courage, sacrifice, prudence, beauty, individuality, and creativity. This is illustrated by
1. Islamic powers-that- be closing the gates to free enquiry(loss of creativity and individuality)

2. the global oligarchs ' conspiracy to defraud together with their lack of justification for their dishonesty. especially tax evasions.(loss of prudence)

3. The so-called 'new right ' fictitiously boasting newness, as if lacking knowledge of causes were a virtue.(loss of individuality)

4. Isis's destruction of ancient treasures, and of ancient traditions of cooperative behaviour. (loss of human courage and lost sense of identity)

5 Trump and Co their philistinism e.g their architecture.(one sign of their loss of creativity).
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GreatandWiseTrixie
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Re: Democracy & the Unreasonable: Lessons from Rawls

Post by GreatandWiseTrixie »

I hate democrats, liberals and Republicans.

Demo-crazy. May the loudest Trump-et win. The mob majority. The majority being sheep who can't think of a single original thought.

Thought-stealers.
Belinda
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Re: Democracy & the Unreasonable: Lessons from Rawls

Post by Belinda »

I hope that Trixie's post does not deter thoughtful responders as this is an urgent topic.
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GreatandWiseTrixie
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Re: Democracy & the Unreasonable: Lessons from Rawls

Post by GreatandWiseTrixie »

Belinda wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2017 11:41 pm I hope that Trixie's post does not deter thoughtful responders as this is an urgent topic.
Democrazy will not overcome fundamentalism, since people are fundamentally stupid, worldwide.
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GreatandWiseTrixie
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Re: Democracy & the Unreasonable: Lessons from Rawls

Post by GreatandWiseTrixie »

Belinda wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2017 8:37 pm Thanks Philosophy Now for the essay based upon the political philosophy of John Rawls linked to in post #1.

Liberals are not entirely without ammunition in a fight for right where unreasoned antagonists are metatasized throughout the society. We have human sympathy to fall back on .Human sympathy as symbol and as manifested is augmented by mass communications, to an extent unknown in the nineties. We also have arts and artists who are still not swept away by metastases of unreason. Perhaps foremost among the arts is free reportage.
Liberals usually have very little sympathy or empathy. Usually if someone does something they don't approve of, they want to destroy their careers.

Do you seek to a loud mob, for moral guidance.
swagner
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Re: Democracy & the Unreasonable: Lessons from Rawls

Post by swagner »

The writer/Rawls? seem purist about reasonableness- seems best as a normative that ebbs and flows empirically, not boolean. I do feel that there's a kind of criticality inflection point, in the sense of nonlinear dynamics, where the systems goes bad at some point of unreasonableness, but that's a lot different than just saying that reasonableness happens or doesn't. In particular, criticality implies much less predictabilty, and much more system sensitivity, so that one can't say that this level of unreasonableness will break the system; it could happen with much less, say, if the President is particularly unreasonable, so that his unreasonableness impacts particular institutions in a particular way.

My big problem with the article, though is with assumptions, as usually occurs (why do people spend so little time acknowledging and defending their assumptions?). More cultural diversity (I'm assuming the vague "diversity" of the article is cultural diversity, only because I'm not sure what other kinds of diversity could be in play) is wrongly assumed as necessarily increasing over time in a democracy. Ask the nationalists if that's true, or the democracies that have net outflows of citizens. It also assumes cultural diversity is tantamount to moral diversity, thereby making it possible to assume that cultural diversity is tantamount to more conflict/unreasonableness. This is essentially a nationalist argument (sans the part about "more diversity is just coming and coming, oh boy"), and it's poppycock.

In contrast, I suspect that well-run cultural diversity will mean 'asymptotic' moral convergence. In other words, cultural diversity is not moral diversity, if moral diversity means that we get more and more cultures that are cool with more and more widely disagreed upon mores. That would imply that diversity means we approach closer and closer to having some groups think its ok to be stealing and murdering, which seems a quite precise and aggressive assumption.

My personal opinion is a bit of an opposite, that a well-run, culturally diverse democracy is more likely to have converging mores, with less empirical morality differentials. Lots more ways of getting to those converging mores, but much less differential in a practical sense.
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