{"id":5542,"date":"2017-05-07T14:33:07","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T14:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/05\/07\/our-politics-becoming-like-philosophy\/"},"modified":"2017-05-07T14:33:07","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T14:33:07","slug":"our-politics-becoming-like-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/05\/07\/our-politics-becoming-like-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"When Politics Becomes Like Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In philosophy everything is up for grabs. Our politics are becoming like this. There is less and less on which we agree. We can't even agree that nations need enforceable and enforced borders!<\/span><\/p>\n

Widespread and deep-going lack of consensus in philosophy casts serious doubt on the cognitivity of the discipline, but is otherwise not that big of a deal as long as the controversies of the cognoscenti<\/em> are confined to the ivory towers. Academic controversies rarely spill into the streets. No one literally gets up in arms over the correct analysis of counterfactual conditionals. <\/span><\/p>\n

But widespread and deep-going lack of consensus among the citizens of a country can lead to civil war. The USA is now in a state of cold civil war; if it heats up it won't be pretty.<\/span><\/p>\n

The denigrators of philosophy typically dismiss it as so much hot air.  What they don't realize is that many if not most of the hot-button issues that exercise them are philosophical at bottom. To see what I mean, consider a few issues that divide Left and Right:<\/span><\/p>\n