> > > >Please what? Ravi goes on about sort sort wierd context relative >truth, so I >just quoted Ari's old definition that no one has improved on these >2500 >years. > > >================= > >Truth is more problematic than issues of representing form and we >frankly have no decision procedure for determining whether or not >there is only one form of truth because we have yet to achieve an >exhaustive account of what is and surely an exhaustive account of >what is not is not possible.
I have no idea what this means. The only notion of truth I haveever been able to attach any sense to is this boring on Aristotlean notion, maybe as tarted up by Tarski and Davidson. However, the issue, with regards to >law, is the ontic and epistemic status of *oughts*; the very stuff >of politics. > That's philosophy, not law. > >Any lawyer will tell you that the law is a crude instrument, that >most >lawyers aren't very good, and I will add that liberal democracy is >the >doctrine that there's a lot of stuff that the law has nothing to say >about. >No one has maintained the Platonic Truth view of the law for over >100 years. >======================= > >Yes, but many pretend. What is a non-circular justification for laws >forbidding people to consume the chemicals of their choice or >purchase sexual pleasure "in the market" etc. etc. Lawyers don't make these rules, legislators do. It's not our biz. Don't blame us for the stupid laws p[assed your democratically elected representatives. Again the issue >of just who is an expert in the realm of constructing and enforcing >the forbidden in the absence of a platonic realm of noughts and >oughts. > Not at all. Legislation is politics, not technical expertise. > > > >What's your alternative? > >========================= > >A severe circumscription of the use of the concept of *expert* in >order to open cultural discussions about the polysemy of expertise >so as to diffuse the collective knowledge of the species to date so >that it is not concentrated in the brains of elites. > Well, I'd like to see a better educated public. But not everyone can be an expert on anything. I have too much education already and there is lots of stuff I don't even want to know. You will never get rid of expertise. Sorry. Except by Pol Pot methods. > > > >What is the expert *like*? A god perhaps? > >What I said, a person who has knowledge and skills you don't. > > >================= > >By that definition everyone's an expert on something; so if dealing >with the complementarities of expertise is easy, we're still back to >when experts conflict. Life is hard. That's what politics is for. *Should* insider trading *really be illegal? >*Should smoking pot land you time in jail? These are questions for politics, not expertise. Etc. etc. *Is* Windows >better than Macs? Better for what? >So lets talk about the efforts and $ the legal profession exerts to >dumb down juries! :-) Surely a respect for the demos is at work in >their motivations! > What makes you think thatlawyers want dumb juries? jks _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
