stevo: when earlier you said this:
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But as much data as there is, it is always incomplete. and often its presented in a biased manner. Its important and is definately the basis of discussion, but there are some things we will never know, that the data will never show, until after its happened. One cannot rely soley on data
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i understand that there will always be predispositions that enter into an interpretation--but controlling for that is a function of debate/discussion. but what i am curious about is whether you believe, as you seem to from the above, that complete information (what would that mean?) is possible? or that it is required before you could make judgements about the world routed through information as opposed to through prior committments?
i am just wondering if there is an impossible standard here.
from my experience in the wonderful world of doing history, i can tell you that information is never--ever--complete and never--ever--without "bias" but somehow folk mange to assemble it anyway, control for such limitations as they can and put forward arguments about the past. they are all, in the end, arguments (the notion that history is history is absurd--history is argument about the past based on fragments--think about it--if you were to imagine yourself the subject of a historical biography by someone say 70 years from now, and that person were to base the bio exclusively on the written trail you leave behind, how much about you would you think that person could possibly know?)
alansmithee:
yours seems a more extreme position than stevo outlines for himself--in his case, it looks to me like there is at least an attempt to process political position and information together--even if, in the end, this relation seems to get disrupted by a desire for total information--which is impossible--and so this deisre collapses back on an extreme suspicion of information. this means that there is one type of discussion to be had maybe--but your position seems to preclude that.
you say that folk who oppose conservativeland in all its variants cannot understand that conservative arguments appeal to some people. that is ridiculous---it seems pretty obvious, even from the fact that you posted the claim, that thereis no debate about that part. but when pressed on what it is about these arguments that you, for example, find to be compelling, you say refer to terms like faith, intuition, emotion, etc. none of these refer to the world outside you--they refer to your aesthetic preferences...
faith, intuition, emotion: what kind of bases are these for a political position? particularly in a democratic (or even american-style pseudo-democratic) system? isn't this kind of political position=faith, emotion, intuition a way of rendering any and all propositions about the world entirely non-falsifiable?
and if that is the case, what exactly is the point of debate?
and your characterization of this fiction called "liberal" argument--fiction because there is no single position opposed to the right that is the mirror image of the right--sorry about that, but its true--the contemporary right is a very strange phenomenon--anyway, you seem to be working with a cartoon understanding of the range of arguments that oppose conservative ideology an the grounds on which they operate. but from your two statements, i wonder if it would be possible at any time for a "liberal" argument to be compelling for you?
it sounds like the answer would be no--but maybe i'm wrong.
if i am not, however--again----what is the point of debate?