"Mormon Student, Justice, ACLU Join Up"

[RJLipkin at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/7/2007 10:16:25 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
conkle at indiana.edu writes:

Under the  framework I suggest, the most important difference between the two 
 competing perspectives is what falls within the zone of permissible  
argument/discourse/source of truth and what falls outside  it:



        I'm not sure how Dan  defines "closed minded religious observes" and 
"close-minded secularists. But if  we're ever to make headway in this area we 
need to discuss ideal types. In a  series of articles I've distinguished 
between dedicated reasoners.  Dedicatedists (a horrible neologism to be sure) are 
those who have fairly  concrete premises which they will never abandon, which 
form a relatively closed  system of reasoning, beliefs, and values, are only 
tangentially related to the  everyday experience of us ordinary folks, and if 
they try to formulate an  epistemology, they result is typically a highly 
idiosyncratic one.  Deliberative reasoners by contrast hold everything tentatively 
and  insist that no principle or judgement is necessary and can be challenged, 
but  not, as the analytic philosopher Quine says, all at once. There are 
dedicated  theists and dedicated secularists, Marx illustrates the latter. And 
there are  deliberative theists and deliberative secularists.  Consequently, I 
think  it is a terribly unfortunate mistake, one which blocks further insight in  
this area, to make the distinction between theists and secularists. Rather, 
the  conceptually and politically distinction is between dedicatedists and  
deliberativists.

Bobby

Robert Justin  Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of  Law
Delaware

Ratio Juris
,  Contributor: _  http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/_ 
(http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/) 
Essentially Contested  America, Editor-In-Chief 
_http://www.essentiallycontestedamerica.org/_ (http://www.essentiallycontestedamerica.org/) 



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