From: rooney@cheshire.oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney)
Subject: Re: Of apples and their skins
Organization: Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041 USA.
Distribution: world 
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 20:55:09 GMT

In article <1992Oct13.163542.28622@netcom.com> steveth@netcom.com (Steve Thomas) writes:
>In article <1992Oct13.022116.11126@cheshire.oxy.edu> rooney@cheshire.oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney) writes:
>
>[stuff deleted]
>>  And I'm by no means convinced that philosophy has nothing 
>>to offer in terms of justifying moral claims: it just seems rather
>>iffy.
>
>OK.  So does this mean you haven't made up your own mind about the question,
>or do you truly think the question is "iffy" in a metaphysical sense?
>NFI, just q question...
>

	Watch the context, if you please.  The "philosophy" and
"justification" I write of here is the strong sense of a Plato or
Kant: metaphysical postulates directly supporting moral claims.
Philosophy, including mathematical inquiry into the foundations
of truth claims, has many less controversial means of clarifying
and justifying moral discourse, although such aids typically depend 
on a certain level of pre-rational agreement on the terms of the
moral discourse and so remains especially vulnerable to incommensurability.
 
>>
>>	When did I (or Russell) ever claim that abandoning strong
>>foundationalism should cause us to give up hope or stop caring about
>>human suffering?  "We can't sure of anything" does not equal "We can't
>>argue with the Powers that Be". [...]
>
>Yes, I forgot, there is always screaming at the top of your lungs at
>somebody else incoherently.  Yes, as skeptics we CAN argue, can't we?

	Again, when did either Russell or I argue for skepticism?
(You'll have a hard time with Russell, and although I've made many
sympathetic remarks about skepticism, I've never championed anything
so radically relativist as to claim that all one can do to argue is
to scream incoherently.)

>
>>
>>	Steve, like a lot of people today, you seem to have invested 
>>heavily in the Despairing Skepticism view of abstract philosophical or
>>mathematical inquiry.  Blindly assuming that technical philosophical
>>conundrums have no relation to the real world, or that philosophers
>>just spend their time on these problems in a sort of cynical disregard
>>for the Real World (tm) is as much a ideological construct of the
>>vaunted Men in Power as any of the ignorant accusations you're hurling
>>here.
>
>There are lots of "technical" philosophical point that have relationship
>to the real world.  I can take many very technical points and demonstrate a
>usage for them in the real world--i.e. the world outside of the direct
>discpline.  My original point about Russell et. al. was that this was not
>the case with them.
>

	Then you're simply flaunting your ignorance of Russell's 
project.  To put things broadly, how can you make any claims for
"answers" to the "problems" of the "real world" if you haven't 
investigated the foundations of truth claims?  Please note that
I'm not claiming that one *must* study set theory before trying
to solve world hunger, to the contrary, Zermelo is probably not
needed at all.  But you're making the outrageous claim that these
technical points have no use at all, and that philosophy should
be producing the answers to Somalia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, et al.
as a matter of course.  *If* you do want to make strong claims 
about morality or politics and ground them in philosophy, then
you'd best be prepared to appreciate Russell.

>
>sci.philosophy.meta.flame, anyone?
>

	Again, give up the "innocent poster being flamed" pose.
It's still you shooting off about Russell and putting philosophers
against the wall without an iota of credibility.

Cordially, 

Michael S. Rooney