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Pragmatism and Racism

Should pragmatist be charged with provoking hate crimes?

  • Yes, pragmatism is provocative.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Yes, pragmatism leads to prejudice.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No, pragmatism does not lead to prejudice.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    3

Daktoria

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Pragmatism and the Problem of Race - Bill E. Lawson, Donald F. Koch - Google Books

This is an excellent article on how encouraging pragmatic thinking in society encourages racist (among generally prejudiced) thought in general.

It's common sense really. People's attention spans are only so wide, so when we demand that people make decisions a certain way, that decision making process will carry over throughout life.

Therefore, people who encourage pragmatism should be charged with provocation of hate crimes.
 
Hate criminals attack pawns and decoys, which means they aren't very pragmatic. But even more relevant to rejecting your challenge is the fact that pragmatists should should ignore egalitarian fantasies and concentrate on solutions that fit the facts and work. Debate about hate is a distraction from action. A pragmatist should not bother to get involved in discussions that are full of loaded phrases and other rhetorical tricks. Abstract systems are the playing fields of self-indulgent amateur thinkers.
 
Hate criminals attack pawns and decoys, which means they aren't very pragmatic.

If anything, attacking pawns and decoys is as pragmatic as it gets because they're marginal targets.

Pragmatism is marginal logic because by emphasizing radical empiricism, it focuses on (marginal) appearances, not what lays beneath (the margin).

Besides, attacking someone in one's personal life is a marginal, pragmatic attack as well.

But even more relevant to rejecting your challenge is the fact that pragmatists should should ignore egalitarian fantasies

I'm not sure what's egalitarian about pragmatism. It discriminates against people capable of higher-order logic.

Are you suggesting the talented should be leveled down to everyone else's stupidity?

and concentrate on solutions that fit the facts and work. Debate about hate is a distraction from action.

Debate about hate can also encourage hate. It's an unreliable solution.

A pragmatist should not bother to get involved in discussions that are full of loaded phrases and other rhetorical tricks. Abstract systems are the playing fields of self-indulgent amateur thinkers.

This sounds backwards.

Nature is concrete by default. Therefore, abstraction is maturity.
 
Pragmatism and the Problem of Race - Bill E. Lawson, Donald F. Koch - Google Books

This is an excellent article on how encouraging pragmatic thinking in society encourages racist (among generally prejudiced) thought in general.

It's common sense really. People's attention spans are only so wide, so when we demand that people make decisions a certain way, that decision making process will carry over throughout life.

Therefore, people who encourage pragmatism should be charged with provocation of hate crimes.




I went to the link. When I got to page 24 and it finally said "Let us begin by discussing pragmatism blah blah blah..." my eyes glazed over and I lost interest.



No, I don't believe in prosecuting philosophical pragmatists for a hate crime.... of course not, holy crap what IS this crusade you're on??
 
Pragmatism and the Problem of Race - Bill E. Lawson, Donald F. Koch - Google Books

This is an excellent article on how encouraging pragmatic thinking in society encourages racist (among generally prejudiced) thought in general.

It's common sense really. People's attention spans are only so wide, so when we demand that people make decisions a certain way, that decision making process will carry over throughout life.

Therefore, people who encourage pragmatism should be charged with provocation of hate crimes.

Well this is new...being pragmatic = racist.

Idiocy.
 
Well this is new...being pragmatic = racist.

Idiocy.



Sometimes I'm starting to think that breathing must be racist. ;)





Well, if you're white or mostly-white, anyway...
 
Well this is new...being pragmatic = racist.

Idiocy.

Would you agree it's pragmatic to conclude that Kenyans are good at running Marathons, or that blacks excel at basketball or football?
 
Would you agree it's pragmatic to conclude that Kenyans are good at running Marathons, or that blacks excel at basketball or football?




Here are some opposing views on that...

Jon Entine has argued, most prominently in his book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why we’re Afraid to Talk about It, that body type and physiology are shaped by evolution and can be correlated, somewhat loosely, to skin color.[18] He claims that Africans from different parts of the continent have different body types and on average, excel in different sports. For example, Kenyans have won most of the cross-country races for the better part of thirty years, and East Africans who trace their ancestry to areas along the Rift Valley dominate endurance running. East Africans have a higher percentage of slow-twitch fibers in their muscles, a slightly longer body, longer legs, and larger lung capacities which help in endurance and long-distance running.[18] Conversely, Western African-descended runners dominate in anaerobic sports, including sprinting. People with ancestral roots in this region of Africa have bigger, more visible muscles along with a higher number of fast-twitch fibers in their muscles. They also have less natural body fat, narrower hips, and higher levels of testosterone.[18] Anthropologist Ian Kerr criticized Entine's hypothesis, stating that biological variation cannot be used to uphold claims of racial superiority in athletics.[19]

Joseph L. Graves argues that Kenyans and East Africans who have done well in long distance running all have come from high-altitude areas, whereas East Africans from low-altitude areas do not perform particularly well. He also argues that Koreans and Ecuadorians from high-altitude areas compete well with Kenyans in long-distance races. This suggests that it is the fact of having trained in a high altitude, combined with possible local level physiological adaptations to high-altitude environments that is behind the success in long distance running, not race. Similarly, Graves argues that while it is superficially true that most of the world recordholders in 100-metre dash are of West African heritage, they also all have partial genetic heritage from Europe and Native America, they have also all trained outside of West Africa, and West African nations have not trained any top-level runners. Graves says these factors make it impossible to say to which degree the success is best attributed to genetic or to environmental factors.[20]


It would appear that the pragmatic answer is "maybe... in some cases, but not all."
 
Would you agree it's pragmatic to conclude that Kenyans are good at running Marathons, or that blacks excel at basketball or football?

No. Whether someone is good at running marathons or excels at basketball or football is entirely dependent on how hard they individually work to achieve their goal. Certainly has nothing to do with what country or race they are.
 
Pragmatism and the Problem of Race - Bill E. Lawson, Donald F. Koch - Google Books

This is an excellent article on how encouraging pragmatic thinking in society encourages racist (among generally prejudiced) thought in general.

It's common sense really. People's attention spans are only so wide, so when we demand that people make decisions a certain way, that decision making process will carry over throughout life.

Therefore, people who encourage pragmatism should be charged with provocation of hate crimes.


I do not see that it does. One line jumped out at me, "we cannot even get a sense of whether or not things are changing without systematically recognizing racial difference". This is true even if only for the various traditions and folklore that has been past from generation to generation.

The discussion within this piece does not convince me that pragmatic thinking encourages racism.
 
No. Whether someone is good at running marathons or excels at basketball or football is entirely dependent on how hard they individually work to achieve their goal. Certainly has nothing to do with what country or race they are.

Are you claiming it's impractical to have weight classes in boxing?
 
I am a pragmatist but I am not racist. If a person, regardless of sexuality, sex, race, etc, is better at something than another person, then person a should do that. Jamaicans are better at short sprints and Kenyans are better at long runs. If I wanted to make a track team I'd probably go to Kenya and Jamaica. That's not racist, that's just using your resources.
 
Nope. But then weight classes have absolutely nothing to do with race. It only considers peoples weight and nothing else.

...so you're prejudiced towards one physical characteristic, but not another?
 
I am a pragmatist but I am not racist. If a person, regardless of sexuality, sex, race, etc, is better at something than another person, then person a should do that. Jamaicans are better at short sprints and Kenyans are better at long runs. If I wanted to make a track team I'd probably go to Kenya and Jamaica. That's not racist, that's just using your resources.

I didn't say all pragmatists would be racists.

You're a smart person, so pragmatism doesn't imbue racism in your mind, but someone with less attention wouldn't be able to exercise pragmatism in a non-racist manner.

When pragmatism is broadcast into the public domain, it contacts smart and dumb people alike.
 
I didn't say all pragmatists would be racists.

You're a smart person, so pragmatism doesn't imbue racism in your mind, but someone with less attention wouldn't be able to exercise pragmatism in a non-racist manner.

When pragmatism is broadcast into the public domain, it contacts smart and dumb people alike.

I'm not exactly sure how pragmatism could cause prejudice unless the pragmatist that was spreading his beliefs was prejudiced himself.
 
Would you agree it's pragmatic to conclude that Kenyans are good at running Marathons, or that blacks excel at basketball or football?
I'm not the one you asked. I'm a retired design engineer, parents were both artists. Pragmatic in our processes you bet. So, to continue, it is not "pragmatic to conclude that Kenyans are good at running Marathons, or that blacks excel at basketball or football" a correct description of pragmatism. There isn’t even enough data to conclude this. To describe an extreme of the case you try to make: It could be that there is a particular gene that is associated with the possibility of playing basketball well and some groups of ‘blacks’ have it in 2% of their population while other groups of blacks and all others have it in 1% of their population. Then you would find that a certain group of blacks had double the possibility of being good a basketball. And you think that describes the character of a race? And you think that that is pragmatic thought? Think again.
 
...so you're prejudiced towards one physical characteristic, but not another?

Nope. The weight classes are to pit like people against each other so that there is fairness. After all, its not exactly fair to pit a 120 lb guy vs a 300 lb guy right? You couldn't have picked the worst possible analogy to use to prove your case.
 
I'm not the one you asked. I'm a retired design engineer, parents were both artists. Pragmatic in our processes you bet. So, to continue, it is not "pragmatic to conclude that Kenyans are good at running Marathons, or that blacks excel at basketball or football" a correct description of pragmatism. There isn’t even enough data to conclude this. To describe an extreme of the case you try to make: It could be that there is a particular gene that is associated with the possibility of playing basketball well and some groups of ‘blacks’ have it in 2% of their population while other groups of blacks and all others have it in 1% of their population. Then you would find that a certain group of blacks had double the possibility of being good a basketball. And you think that describes the character of a race? And you think that that is pragmatic thought? Think again.

The degree of satisfactory evidence isn't the same for everyone.

For people with less attention to spare, they can only assess so much information before it becomes impractical.
 
Nope. The weight classes are to pit like people against each other so that there is fairness. After all, its not exactly fair to pit a 120 lb guy vs a 300 lb guy right? You couldn't have picked the worst possible analogy to use to prove your case.

In other words, you're prejudiced towards weight, but not race.

Evaluating function versus form isn't practical to everyone.
 
I do not see that it does. One line jumped out at me, "we cannot even get a sense of whether or not things are changing without systematically recognizing racial difference". This is true even if only for the various traditions and folklore that has been past from generation to generation.

The discussion within this piece does not convince me that pragmatic thinking encourages racism.

Pages 25-30 in particular explain how pragmatism advocates a dismissal of complete abstract reasoning in favor of particular concrete reasoning.

The implication is people should be judged for what they are, not who they are.
 
Pages 25-30 in particular explain how pragmatism advocates a dismissal of complete abstract reasoning in favor of particular concrete reasoning.

The implication is people should be judged for what they are, not who they are.

Nevertheless, this is not demonstrative of a racist based paradigm.
 
Race isn't included among what people are?

Yes, nonetheless , it does not support your theory, "pragmatic thinking in society encourages racist (among generally prejudiced) thought in general"
 
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