Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism

At 04:17 PM 7/21/2007, David Opderbeck wrote:

>"...Maybe the overall point is that MN, at least in some substantial
>part, is based on a pragmatist epistemology. Pragmatist
>epistemology, I would argue, has failed to justify ethics or law,
>and fails to provide an adequate ground for sociology or political
>science. I would even suggest that Dewey's pragmatism is the root
>of contemporary relativism. If you want to argue that MN is
>appropriate for natural science, I don't think it's a convincing
>argument to look at what MN has done in the social sciences. In the
>social sciences, the effort to employ MN is a rank example of
>scientism, and it has been disastrous." ~ David O.

@ Speaking of.....
07/18/07 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1869902/posts

Excerpt:

.... The Progressive Rejection of the Founding

Shortly after the end of the Civil War, a large majority of Americans
shared a set of beliefs concerning the purpose of government, its
structure, and its most important public policies. Constitutional
amendments were passed abolishing slavery and giving the national
government the authority to protect the basic civil rights of
everyone. Here was a legal foundation on which the promise of the
American Revolution could be realized in the South, beyond its
already existing implementation in the Northern and Western states.

This post-Civil War consensus was animated by the principles of the
American founding. I will mention several characteristic features of
that approach to government and contrast them with the new,
Progressive approach. Between about 1880 and 1920, the earlier
orientation gradually began to be replaced by the new one. In the New
Deal period of the 1930s, and later even more decisively in the 1960s
and '70s, the Progressive view, increasingly radicalized by its
transformation into contemporary liberalism, became predominant.

1. The Rejection of Nature and the Turn to History

The Founders believed that all men are created equal and that they
have certain inalienable rights. All are also obliged to obey the
natural law, under which we have not only rights but duties. We are
obliged "to respect those rights in others which we value in
ourselves" (Jefferson). The main rights were thought to be life and
liberty, including the liberty to organize one's own church, to
associate at work or at home with whomever one pleases, and to use
one's talents to acquire and keep property. For the Founders, then,
there is a natural moral order--rules discovered by human reason that
promote human well-being, rules that can and should guide human life
and politics.

The Progressives rejected these claims as naive and unhistorical. In
their view, human beings are not born free. John Dewey, the most
thoughtful of the Progressives, wrote that freedom is not "something
that individuals have as a ready-made possession." It is "something
to be achieved." In this view, freedom is not a gift of God or
nature. It is a product of human making, a gift of the state. Man is
a product of his own history, through which he collectively creates
himself. He is a social construct. Since human beings are not
naturally free, there can be no natural rights or natural law.
Therefore, Dewey also writes, "Natural rights and natural liberties
exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology."

Since the Progressives held that nature gives man little or nothing
and that everything of value to human life is made by man, they
concluded that there are no permanent standards of right. Dewey spoke
of "historical relativity." However, in one sense, the Progressives
did believe that human beings are oriented toward freedom, not by
nature (which, as the merely primitive, contains nothing human), but
by the historical process, which has the character of progressing
toward increasing freedom. So the "relativity" in question means that
in all times, people have views of right and wrong that are tied to
their particular times, but in our time, the views of the most
enlightened are true because they are in conformity with where
history is going. ...."

~ Janice .... one of my posts is here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1869902/posts?page=12#12
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Received on Sun Jul 22 15:54:03 2007