Philosophically speaking, don't trust someone claiming to be a pragmatist. They aren't one.
Almost every student of philosophy is lured by the appeal of a pragmatic ideology. Throw away having to defend one idea or another, and instead rely on what works. Just believe what lets you do what works.
But here's the catch. What works is relative. What is effective and efficient is culturally and situationally bound. Check out any culture, and you find underlying values that help shape the manifestation of and assign meaning to the behaviors of the culture's people. So what works, while it sounds prima facia to be a simple application of common sense, is actually an expression of deeply seated normative assumptions.
Said another way, pragmatists still have value directing their ideology. They just hid it behind their culture.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
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