Partial Truths and Our Common Future, livre ebook

In this book, Donald A. Crosby defends the idea that all claims to truth are at best partial. Recognizing this, he argues, is a necessary safeguard against arrogance, close-mindedness, and potentially violent reactions to differences of outlook and practice. Crosby demonstrates how "partial truths" are inevitably at work in conversations and debates about religion, science, morality, economics, ecology, and social and political progress. He then focuses on the concept in the discipline of philosophy, looking at a number of distinctions that are taken to be strictly binary—those between fact and value, continuity and novelty, rationalism and empiricism, mind and body, and good and evil—and demonstrates how in all of these cases, each on its own can offer only an incomplete picture. Partial Truths and Our Common Future invites ongoing dialogue with others for the sake of mutual enlargements of understanding rather than mere civility, and provides incentive for continuing open-minded and shared inquiries into the important issues of life.
Preface
1. Religion
The Dao and Other Religious Ultimates that Cannot Be Spoken
A God of All Creation and of All Peoples
Transcendence and Immanence in Religion of Nature
The Paradox of Existential Certitude
2. Science
The Claim to Scientific Objectivity
Assumptions Lying Behind Scientific Reasoning
The Need for Dialogue between Science and Other Fields of Thought
Science and the Future
3. Morality
Truth and Goodness
Aristotle and Mill
Hobbes and Hume
Kant and Rawls
Obligations to Nature and All the Creatures of Nature
4. Economics and Ecology
Earth as Warehouse of Resources for Human Use
Free Markets Automatically and Maximally Benefit Everyone
Healthy Economic Systems Always Exhibit Steady Growth
Globalization is Beneficial to Everyone
Government Deficits are Bad and Should Always be Avoided to the Greatest Possible Extent
Capitalism is Always Good and Any Tendency to Socialism is Bad
Wheeling and Dealing
Partiality of Truths as Excuses for Inaction
5. Philosophy
Facts and Values
Continuity and Novelty
Rationalism and Empiricism
Mind-Body Dualism and Reductionism
Good and Evil
6. Humanity
Stunted and Soaring Trees
Signs of Approaching Disaster
Signs of Hope
7. Perspectives
Perspectival Realism
The Necessary Perspectivity of a God’s-Eye View of the World
Epistemic Norms
Concluding Comments
Notes
Works Cited
Index