Comment by smitty1e
2 hours ago
The article was hilarious to me. To whom are we responsible? And who manages the "truth" supply?
If we're assuming a postmodern stance that there is no objective truth, or even a utilitarian stance that truth is a consensus, then life is reduced to some extended chemical reaction, and there is no difference between a Stalin and a Mother Theresa.
If one posits some religious definition of an objective truth, then at least there is a definition to measure against beside "Do as thou wilt".
I'm not a huge Chomsky fan anyway. Despite his appeal to truth, he tends to ring false for me.
Yet, we are bombarded with easily-falsifiable claims (“assassin”) by government officials and ridiculously-framed accounts (“officer-involved shooting”) from certain news outlets.
This sort of contrarianism is especially grating given the amount of distancing from social responsibility occurs here as a forum of what should be mostly intellectuals.
Put differently, intellectuals and technologists wield more power to enact both positive and negative change than the average citizens in a democratic society. I would agree with Chomsky that there is some relationship to exposing truth in an information-based society.
Responsibility is to those that give status. Duty of the pro-social sort is what you buy status (regard) with.
Neither subjective or consensus accounts of truth (neither of which correspond with postmodernism or utilitarianism in the way you imply) are obviously inconsistent. Philosophers would not bother talking about them if that were the case.
Funnily enough, I can't tell which of Stalin and Mother Theresa you are worried will be confused with the other, given that many people have opposite ideas of which was moral and which was immoral.
Modern religions define objective morality, not objective truth (excluding metaphysical assertions, which are not what one usually means by truth).
utilitarianism is when you add up the suffering. stalin made number go up, mother teresa made number go down. these are also not the only options.
Nevertheless, whoever controls the definition of "suffering" is powerful.
Saw the link to the full article below.
Chomsky never gets around to a teleological argument as to why US intervention in Vietnam was wrong; it's all so much quoting and puffery.
US involvement was unnecessary in Vietnam because unlike the Koreans, communist Vietnam hated China, and was in no danger of being their ally (puppet.)
Mcnamara actually explained this at some point. That’s why we are allies with Vietnam today and not North Korea.