At 01:45 PM 30/11/2003 -0500, Eugene wrote:
The practical question for me is what constitutes a boundary between your
and their communities and how to bridge this boundary&.
>What do you think?
Exactly! This is surely one of the great questions of our times. One of the
elements of the answer is that the bridge cannot be through theory or what
I call "sacred history". As vital as they are to the life of each one of
us, these constitute the barriers not the bridges. So contrariwise I think
the answer lies in the broad terrain of ethical politics. There are a
number of candidates for bridge-building here. (i) Values: personally I
think values are of limited though non-trivial use. They constitute the
currency of exchange but not the activity or movement itself. (ii) Rules
and maxims of collaboration, I think are important, like "Mind your own
business", and "What we do must be decided by us (not by you or me
alone!)", (iii) Meaning, which is the one raised by the discussion on
Peirce, this is where the meaning of your own life intersects with the
meaning of your actions to others. When Bush spends "Thankgiving" in his
flak-jacket in Iraq, that has a very clear meaning.
Andy
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