By John Ballard
Review of another review. That's what blogging is about, especially for those of us who seem not to have time enough to read as much as we would like. (Or think, perhaps wrongly, that we already know what's in the pages.)
Thanks, Abbas.
In this case, Dr. Talisse comes to terms with a critical subject: conflict resolution. These snips in his own words will advance his arguments better than anything I write.
Democracy is in crisis. So we are told by nearly every outlet of political comment, from politicians and pundits to academicians and ordinary citizens. This is not surprising, given that the new millennium seems to be off to a disconcerting and violent start: terrorism, genocide, torture, assassination, suicide bombings, civil war, human rights abuse, nuclear proliferation, religious extremism, poverty, climate change, environmental disaster, and strained international relations all forebode an uncertain tomorrow for democracy. Some hold that democracy is faltering because it has lost the moral clarity necessary to lead in a complicated world. Others hold that �moral clarity� means little more than moral blindness to the complexity of the contemporary world, and thus that what is needed is more reflection, self-criticism, and humility. Neither side thinks much of the other. Consequently our popular democratic politics is driven by insults, scandal, name-calling, fear-mongering, mistrust, charges of hypocrisy, and worse.
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A problem arises, however, once it is realized that we live under conditions of moral pluralism. We are divided over our most fundamental moral commitments. We disagree about moral basics, and accordingly disagree about the precise shape that our politics should take. Lacking a shared set of moral commitments, democratic citizens cannot resolve conflicts or justify collectively binding decisions by way of an appeal to concepts such as freedom, justice, dignity, autonomy, or even fairness. To be sure, values such as justice do enjoy a conceptual core upon which otherwise divided citizens tend to converge. Accordingly, we tend to agree that, for example, slavery was unjust and that the war against the Nazi regime was a just war. However, rapid changes in culture and technology have raised new kinds of dilemmas that seem to turn on the finer details of our moral concepts, including justice; with regard to these details we find ourselves fundamentally at odds with each other.2 More importantly, since the values over which we are at odds are so fundamental, it is not clear how we should go about resolving our disputes. To what value can we appeal in deciding how to address disputes over fundamental values? We may say that in such cases, we ought to try to resolve our dispute in a way that is fair. But what if we are divided over the nature of fairness itself? Another reply might be that we ought to try to resolve such disputes by seeking a mutually acceptable compromise. But what if we disagree about the terms under which a compromise would be morally acceptable? Perhaps the only recourse is to try to maintain conditions of peaceful co-existence among incompatible moral worldviews. But even then, what if my moral worldview instructs me to value moral correctness over peace? Why should a truce with error be preferred to a fight for what is right? We may encapsulate these questions into one: is there a principled way to avoid Hobbes�s war of all against all?
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In identifying and explicating the commitments constitutive of our folk
epistemology, I will frequently make reference to artifacts of our
contemporary political culture (I did so in the previous paragraph).
Examples are often drawn from sources of popular political discourse
and commentary, including the work of popular pundits such as Al
Franken, Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, Bill O�Reilly, and others. I
suppose some may object to this, claiming that it is unfitting or worse
for an academic to engage with this literature, which is, in the end,
probably better characterized as entertainment and satire than
political commentary. However, given that I aim in part to demonstrate
that certain epistemic commitments are deeply entrenched in our
everyday epistemic practices, the fact that popular political discourse
is saturated with appeals to epistemic concepts such as �no spin
zones,� �straight talk,� �inconvenient truths,� and criticisms of
�bias� and �lying liars� counts as crucial support for my case. I make
no apology for this feature of the book.
[...]
...It is my view that the most serious internally posed crisis we face as democrats is not primarily moral, although it most commonly manifests itself in moral conflict. Perhaps it will come as no surprise that I think that the crisis we face is fundamentally epistemic in nature: we are losing our ability to disagree with one another; or, rather, we are losing our
ability to see those with whom we disagree as mistaken or simply wrong rather than wicked, ignorant, dishonest, perverse, benighted, or foolish. Yet, it is one of the philosophical presuppositions of democracy that there can be disagreement � even deep, heated, and seemingly intractable disagreement � among reasonable, well-intentioned, well-informed, and sincere people doing their best to reason through an issue. Put otherwise, at the core of democracy is the belief that reasoned argument is possible, even among people who are very deeply divided over moral and religious doctrines. The most disturbing trends in contemporary democracy are those which attack this presupposition by encouraging us to lose sight of it.
That should be enough. The reader can take it from there.
My own view of conflict resolution is disarmingly simple (pun, maybe?)...
If everyone else could just see things my way or leave me alone without rejection or persecution most of our problems would vanish.
But I haven't figured out what to do about the Philistines.
This title grabbed my attention as I read through the intro and came across the highlighted portion which tosses together the civilized people and the Philistines. I'll let the reader sort them out. And fresh in my memory was Maggie Mahar's post this morning with a link to last night's appearance of her as a guest of Lou Dobbs. I couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry. Here is a living illustration of someone civilized brave enough to attempt interacting with a couple of Philistines.
One of yesterday's non-stories in the so-called "news cycle" was about a piece of legislation that was red meat for the Fox and talk-show set. Maggie's appearance last night put the issue in perspective, although I'm confident most viewers let her words go in one ear and out the other.
Today, the Washington Post�s Dana Milbank, argued that by making a �deal� with the doctors, the President is reneging on his pledge that the health care plan will not add a dime to the deficit: �Senate Democrats want to protect doctors from scheduled cuts in Medicare payments over the next 10 years, but there [is] a problem,� Milbank explained: �Doing so would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to the federal deficit, making mincemeat of Obama's promise. So Democrats hatched a novel scheme: They would pass the legislation separately, so the $250 billion cost wouldn't be part of the main reform �plan,� thereby allowing the president to claim that [the health care reform] bill wouldn't increase the deficit.�
As I said as the beginning of the Lou Dobbs show last night: this is a non-story. I compared it to the Boy-in-the-Balloon piece which also grabbed headlines�even though there was no basis in fact.There was no boy in the basket. There was no plan to slash Medicare fees to doctors by 21 percent in January. The �scheduled cut� existed only on paper. What Milbank, along with many other observers completely ignore is that everyone knew that it would never happen.
Back in February President Obama made this clear when he refused to factor Draconian cuts in reimbursements to all physicians into his budget. As AMedNews.com reported: �President Obama on Feb. 26 offered a $3.56 trillion fiscal 2010 budget outline calling for sweeping changes to health spending and tax policy, including a recognition that Medicare's physician pay cuts mandated by law are not practical. . . The president estimated that repealing the [cuts] would cost $330 billion over the next decade.�
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