Well, that's not very encouraging as to your faculties. You should have drawn exactly the opposite conclusion to the one you did draw. In my "wife" example, I don't generally ask her for justification because she's proven herself trustworthy in ordinary situations--trustworthy in the sense that she tells me the truth, and trustworthy in the sense that she has all the requisite faculties to determine what is true most of the time.
It is precisely in a "bad faith" (either as to intent or to ability) environment where it becomes crucial for justification to become the norm. Obviously this is a place where different degrees and types of bad faith operates. It's a place where skepticism rules, and should rule. I'm skeptical that anything you've said anywhere in this thread supports your conclusions, so I ask you, for the third time, to say why something you've said in this thread supports your conclusions.
But I drew the conclusion that seemed, again, to be
coherent, necessary, realistic, and fair. And I expand the problem I have described (I refer to it as *bad faith* but this needs also to be elaborated because it also has to do with genuinely incommensurate ways that *reality* is perceived) to the larger, social conditions surrounding us: the lack of agreements about first principles. The lack of agreements about very basic things. And the breakdown in the possibility, therefore, even to communicate and much less so to agree.
So I have made no statement that reveals a diminished 'faculty' and, I submit, statements that indicate that I am
seeing clearly. And if I am seeing clearly I also hope that I am acting sensibly in respect to what I see.
It is precisely in a "bad faith" (either as to intent or to ability) environment where it becomes crucial for justification to become the norm.
I disagree. And I will explain why. I do not believe, and I never did think -- here I will take an example -- that I would ever 'convince' our own fellow forumite Mr Fight the Power to see anything I say, in any topic, but especially in topics that bear on difficult social issues (and all the implied ramifications), as having sense and validity. Why is this? I will give you my
impression because I can have, in this domain,
no certain knowledge. But I will speak generally and not specifically: I think people
set their will not to understand the people, and the ideas, surrounding them. They set up walls of opposition. They invest in these walls.
Similarly, I do not consider it possible to convince Mr TigerAce that, say, Abbeville Institute has validity (that is, that it deals in things that we might understand as being *true*). So who am I communicating with then? I am very clear that I am communicating with a) other people who have written in this thread, and b) other people reading here who may encounter my argument or some facet gof my argument and *see and understand what I ma trying to say*.
This does mean, and has not meant, that I have abandoned coherent argument and presentation of ideas (and support of what I think is true).
I am distinguishing something radically different from skepticism. I am talking about something going on in our present which is an absolute decisiveness to block one's ears so as not to see, not to hear, not to understand. [Additionally, and outside and perhaps beyond the *discursive*, I operate in a zone (epistemological) that I assume you do not or that you don't recognize as even existing. I began my *conversations* with Mr Fight the Power and I learned that he rejects, absolutely, metaphysical categories that I consider vital to understanding. So I take into account that the lack of understanding, and the will not to understand, could have and sometimes seems to me to have
other dimensions, and those dimensions are spiritual. Hard to talk about, yes. "problematic", also. Here I am speaking from a Christian perspective, and in relation to
larger issues I see going on in our world.
I'm skeptical that anything you've said anywhere in this thread supports your conclusions, so I ask you, for the third time, to say why something you've said in this thread supports your conclusions.
Very well:
I refuse to answer your question as you have posed it. I will
not answer your question as you have posed it. I am still open to talking with you, if you so choose, but know that I do not regard you as
directing this conversation. Do you have any questions about this choice? If so let me know.
There is nothing remotely personal in this. I am just letting you know.
