Re: Restored (and a final story for Luke and Daniel)

Jim asks:
<< If there is indeed "myriad differences between different cultures" then
how can we sensibly talk about there being any "common sense" approach to
this question? Who is right and who is wrong? If there is a continuum,
does that mean the middle position is best, or is the existence of the
continuum merely a fluke -- perhaps one of the "extremes" actually represent
an ideal and the rest is really deviation? >>

I meant to suggest that I, at least, am not prepared to say that any of them
are right, or wrong, or even better. All can be arrived at by something
that I think ought to qualify as "common sense" though the final judgement
may differ, because -- again, as it seems to me -- whatever discrete facts
are a part of "common sense," I expect each alone is primarily mundane and
essentially comprise a method, or rules for manipulating other things.

Different groups can come down arbitrarily with certain matters (such as the
relationship between the indivudal and the community), and then use common
sense. The results will vary somewhat (though I expect not arbitrarily or
even infinitely) depending upon the first principles. As the first
principles evolve with time, change suddenly as a result of some event, or
differ from group to group, so varies the results.

I'm not sure of any of this, haven't been thinking about it long, and don't
mean to be confrontational. I'm just tossing it out as something that
seemes reasonable enough to me at the moment.

He goes on:
<< You find that common sense isn't always or even usually all that common,
and that your decisions are really being motivated by specific value
judgments that are best examined out in the open, rather than hidden under
the guise of "common sense." >>

Again, the accuracy of your statistical analysis is not self-evident. One
can just as well say, as I myself currently expect is the case, that common
sense IS usually 100% common, as it is usually just the sort of mundane and
fundamental understanding I referred to earlier -- the sort of reasoning
that though one might deny it for sake of argument, he cannot honestly bring
himself to believe the denial.

For instance -- whether the sanctity of human life begins at conception,
birth, never, or at some other time cannot itself be answered by common
sense. Given certain principles, one might use common sense to come up with
one of these, though it varies with those principles. Likewise, if one
takes it to begin at birth, common sense easily leads one to be pro-choice;
if one takes it to begin at conception, common sense easily leads one to be
pro-life and aghast at the practice of abortion.

-robbie
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Received on Fri Jul 18 21:23:10 2003