Friday, July 10, 2020

THe Incommensurability of American Politics, 2020

Alisdair MacIntyre writes about "incommensurability." The concept comes from the philosophy of science, as a way of talking about rival theories or paradigms.There incommensurability is "the inability to express or comprehend one conceptual scheme, such as Aristotelian physics, in terms of another, such as Newtonian physics. It's as if one group speaks one language--say French--and another speaks an entirely different one--say Mandarin.

Recently philosophers have extended the concept to values. I keep coming back to C. S. Lewis' analogy in Mere Christianity of morality as a fleet of ships. Each ship has to be seaworthy (character); the ships have to sail as a fleet, not crashing into each other (social ethics); and ultimately, the fleet has a destination--(the Good, or the Good Life.)

Alisdair MacIntyre's "Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry" is a study of what happens when conceptual schemes clash--when the ships have two different destinations.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/13/Alasdair_MacIntyre

IMO, the fleet that was America has finally split and is going in (at least) two different directions. They have two rival conceptions of the Good/Good Life. His Stable Genius and his Republican enablers have one conception that is based on self-interest. Then there are others whose conception includes the common good. These two fleets have two different destinations. I am tempted to wonder if they are not hell and heaven.

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