@ miguel cervantes:
All of the cultures you named there were polytheistic, so I don't see what their relevance is to a statement expressly focused on monotheism.
The latter is the Wahhabist way in practice, and the more public practice of Shia governance in Cyrus’s old haunts
As Cohen demonstrates, a philosophical investigation of monotheism will reveal that all states founded on its precepts are theocratic, because morality (or moral reason) inherently takes the share in ethics/politics of religion. It should go without saying that the reluctance of modern states to elucidate or identify, or even to understand, their own foundations may weaken the superstructure, but doesn't suspend it in ideological mid-air. In that sense, the distinction between so-called theocratic states and our own is more a how than a what: In no human state do souls or super egos exist uncorrelated with and unconstructed by fellow souls or super egos, or without relation to concepts of the whole society, of the whole of humanity, and of the divine.
@ fuster:
frog, you ignorant sleepy slut and hippie wanton, no one is saying anything against common sense being applied common-sensically. The problem is people making an appeal to common sense when common sense - or another version of it - ought to tell them that common sense has little or nothing to offer, or is completely over-matched, or has been shown to be dysfunctional and destructive.
You say that Sully abandons common sense in just the above way, but Sully's common sense tells him that he is merely being common-sensically consistent. What is the common sense response to a situation when two mentally competent, well-intentioned people disagree about what common sense tells them is common sense?
Here is Sully's poetic tribute to common sense in the context of the clash of civilizations:
Counting the angels on the head of a pin,
Tends to be silly, but it isn’t a sin,
Parsing the intentions of Islamist thugs,
May not be a sin, but it won’t get you hugs,
Among other things it may get you wings,
And a harp you can play when the fat lady sings.
When people avow that their God has said,
And further attest that their Prophet has writ,
That they may not rest until you are dead,
Unless you bow, and scrape and submit. . .
Believe them.
The only way to disagree with, or make any sense at all of, his sentiment is to do exactly what the poem common-sensically condemns - parse it. Who are the "thugs"? Who are the "people" who "avow" and "further attest"? It turns out that Sully seems to believe that anyone who upholds the Qur'an as "literal truth" must be "believed" to have implacably murderous intent towards anyone who resists humiliating submission before them. There are a thousand common and uncommon sense objections to this position, but the sheer number, depth, and extent of those objections are turned around into an indictment by someone who thinks the description is common sensical and that common sense can tell you what simple common sense things to do with one's common sense "belief."
Common sense applied with uncommon self-consistency always turns to bullshit. Common sense asserted with uncommon stubbornness is just the intellectual burqa draped over brute self-interest.
@ big city but groggy:
well mr. big city, we can sort this out at some later time. I'm not sure that everything you've called "common sense" is really "common sense": Some of it seems closer to wisdom, which may sometimes overlap with common sense.
What you have put forward is a common sensical argument for using common sense in situations where common sense is appropriate, and perhaps for using common sense to determine which situations can best be addressed through common sense.
In any event, neither I nor the philosopher was arguing that common sense is always wrong. It doesn't make much sense to over-think the point of contact or action either from a common sensical or philosophical perspective. Few would argue that we need to phenomenologize our granola in detail prior to consuming it every hippie dippie West Coast morning. It likewise makes no sense, common or philosophical, to accept impossible or unjustified claims of having fully grasped an un-graspable situation. In other areas, however - such as the investigation of complex philosophical or scientific matters, for instance - common sense may offer little more than a beginning point, at best.
The issue is the appropriateness of the appeal to common sense in situations like the last, or in others where my common sense and yours mysteriously reach different conclusions. In such situations the appeal to common sense may make no sense at all, or may equate with an effort to stifle discussion.
Common sense might even tell you to stifle the appeal to common sense in favor an appeal to reason, especially when what has previously passed for common sense may only be a habit of mind, a piece of conventional wisdom, or a parochial viewpoint.
(Hey, frog, I just realized that JE Dyer was a Naval Gazer!)
I think that the quoted passage on "the man of common sense" that fuster found implausible said the same thing, and more, much better. Mebbe I'm biased, tho I'm still curious what he meant by that...
The quotation above it that defines common sense as being based on feeling is one of the least satisfying and plausible explanations that I’ve ever read.
The passage doesn't define common sense. It describes how the appeal to common sense operates, specifically in relation to the introduction of complex, difficult, or unexpected propositions, as in, for example, the statement that someone can say "A" and mean "B."
What is "common sense" as it is expressed or as it operates based on, if not on feeling?
The appeal to common sense amounts to a claim that intuition or observation (or what I claim to have observed or think I have observed) tells me something is so - that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects, that the Earth is flat, that God is pleased by the murder of infidels, that siting a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is obviously wrong, and so on.
Common sense opposes itself to reason, which it calls intellectualism or sophistry. It always claims to know what's right, what needs to be done, without needing to explain itself. It has therefore been adopted as a political value, a slogan, by so-called "common sense conservatives." Common sense seems to tell them all sorts of things. If you don't accept them, you're simply wrong. There's nothing to discuss. Your claim to want to discuss them is a trick, a sign of weakness or decadence or ulterior bad motives. It's also, of course, a sign of distance from the common man, who knows in his heart (who feels) that he's right, and can't be expected to put it in terms that you East Coast Ivy League Big City types will like.
@ Scott Miller:
A question is whether Buddhism would remain Buddhism if it yielded to the logic of monotheism - in a parallel manner to the way that Buddhists appear ready to yield to science wherever convinced that doing so is reasonable:
When I say the logic of monotheism, as when I refer to God in the post, I'm not referring to any particular mythology. An insistence on a particular mythology would always on some level equate with an insistence on literalism as I've been using the term.
Buddhists seem intent on asserting that Buddhism is also "religion of reason." Guided by philosophical scrutiny of the "sources" of Judaism, Cohen finds a pure definition of monotheism that renders God and God's relationship to humanity in a way that almost suggests a merely terminological rather than essential difference between major spiritual outlook. But it's an important "almost" that I don't think we should want merely to set aside or wish away, since the difference may have everything to do with how we conceive of and approach the purpose, or possibility of a purpose, of life.
@ miguel cervantes:
All of the cultures you named there were polytheistic, so I don't see what their relevance is to a statement expressly focused on monotheism.
miguel cervantes wrote:
As Cohen demonstrates, a philosophical investigation of monotheism will reveal that all states founded on its precepts are theocratic, because morality (or moral reason) inherently takes the share in ethics/politics of religion. It should go without saying that the reluctance of modern states to elucidate or identify, or even to understand, their own foundations may weaken the superstructure, but doesn't suspend it in ideological mid-air. In that sense, the distinction between so-called theocratic states and our own is more a how than a what: In no human state do souls or super egos exist uncorrelated with and unconstructed by fellow souls or super egos, or without relation to concepts of the whole society, of the whole of humanity, and of the divine.
@ Scott Miller:
me happy, you happy, everyone bubbling over with happiness. At least there's hope for the nasal givers.
@ fuster:
frog, you ignorant sleepy slut and hippie wanton, no one is saying anything against common sense being applied common-sensically. The problem is people making an appeal to common sense when common sense - or another version of it - ought to tell them that common sense has little or nothing to offer, or is completely over-matched, or has been shown to be dysfunctional and destructive.
You say that Sully abandons common sense in just the above way, but Sully's common sense tells him that he is merely being common-sensically consistent. What is the common sense response to a situation when two mentally competent, well-intentioned people disagree about what common sense tells them is common sense?
Here is Sully's poetic tribute to common sense in the context of the clash of civilizations:
The only way to disagree with, or make any sense at all of, his sentiment is to do exactly what the poem common-sensically condemns - parse it. Who are the "thugs"? Who are the "people" who "avow" and "further attest"? It turns out that Sully seems to believe that anyone who upholds the Qur'an as "literal truth" must be "believed" to have implacably murderous intent towards anyone who resists humiliating submission before them. There are a thousand common and uncommon sense objections to this position, but the sheer number, depth, and extent of those objections are turned around into an indictment by someone who thinks the description is common sensical and that common sense can tell you what simple common sense things to do with one's common sense "belief."
Common sense applied with uncommon self-consistency always turns to bullshit. Common sense asserted with uncommon stubbornness is just the intellectual burqa draped over brute self-interest.
@ big city but groggy:
well mr. big city, we can sort this out at some later time. I'm not sure that everything you've called "common sense" is really "common sense": Some of it seems closer to wisdom, which may sometimes overlap with common sense.
What you have put forward is a common sensical argument for using common sense in situations where common sense is appropriate, and perhaps for using common sense to determine which situations can best be addressed through common sense.
In any event, neither I nor the philosopher was arguing that common sense is always wrong. It doesn't make much sense to over-think the point of contact or action either from a common sensical or philosophical perspective. Few would argue that we need to phenomenologize our granola in detail prior to consuming it every hippie dippie West Coast morning. It likewise makes no sense, common or philosophical, to accept impossible or unjustified claims of having fully grasped an un-graspable situation. In other areas, however - such as the investigation of complex philosophical or scientific matters, for instance - common sense may offer little more than a beginning point, at best.
The issue is the appropriateness of the appeal to common sense in situations like the last, or in others where my common sense and yours mysteriously reach different conclusions. In such situations the appeal to common sense may make no sense at all, or may equate with an effort to stifle discussion.
Common sense might even tell you to stifle the appeal to common sense in favor an appeal to reason, especially when what has previously passed for common sense may only be a habit of mind, a piece of conventional wisdom, or a parochial viewpoint.
"West Coat New Age Hippie Dippie Navel Gazers"?
(Hey, frog, I just realized that JE Dyer was a Naval Gazer!)
I think that the quoted passage on "the man of common sense" that fuster found implausible said the same thing, and more, much better. Mebbe I'm biased, tho I'm still curious what he meant by that...
fuster wrote:
The passage doesn't define common sense. It describes how the appeal to common sense operates, specifically in relation to the introduction of complex, difficult, or unexpected propositions, as in, for example, the statement that someone can say "A" and mean "B."
What is "common sense" as it is expressed or as it operates based on, if not on feeling?
The appeal to common sense amounts to a claim that intuition or observation (or what I claim to have observed or think I have observed) tells me something is so - that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects, that the Earth is flat, that God is pleased by the murder of infidels, that siting a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is obviously wrong, and so on.
Common sense opposes itself to reason, which it calls intellectualism or sophistry. It always claims to know what's right, what needs to be done, without needing to explain itself. It has therefore been adopted as a political value, a slogan, by so-called "common sense conservatives." Common sense seems to tell them all sorts of things. If you don't accept them, you're simply wrong. There's nothing to discuss. Your claim to want to discuss them is a trick, a sign of weakness or decadence or ulterior bad motives. It's also, of course, a sign of distance from the common man, who knows in his heart (who feels) that he's right, and can't be expected to put it in terms that you East Coast Ivy League Big City types will like.
@ Scott Miller:
A question is whether Buddhism would remain Buddhism if it yielded to the logic of monotheism - in a parallel manner to the way that Buddhists appear ready to yield to science wherever convinced that doing so is reasonable:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/science/3631/for_buddhism%2C_science_is_not_a_killer_of_religion/
When I say the logic of monotheism, as when I refer to God in the post, I'm not referring to any particular mythology. An insistence on a particular mythology would always on some level equate with an insistence on literalism as I've been using the term.
Buddhists seem intent on asserting that Buddhism is also "religion of reason." Guided by philosophical scrutiny of the "sources" of Judaism, Cohen finds a pure definition of monotheism that renders God and God's relationship to humanity in a way that almost suggests a merely terminological rather than essential difference between major spiritual outlook. But it's an important "almost" that I don't think we should want merely to set aside or wish away, since the difference may have everything to do with how we conceive of and approach the purpose, or possibility of a purpose, of life.