Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism

> Right, and the parents aren't saying "I refuse to let kids read any books by black authors", they are saying "don't put books into the curriculum just because the authors are black".

Let me tell you my point of view. I am an educator, and so I have bigger stake in this issue than most here on HN, who I would think are by a large majority in the tech field. I don't know what your profession is, but could you imagine if you found out what you say is happening between teachers and parents were happening in your field? You would want to know exactly where that was happening, right? Because as a person in this field, you would have some power and authority in that community to affect real change. To stamp out that behavior. Right? That's where I am at now. If what you're saying is true, I'm really upset by that, because it reflects directly on my profession and myself, and I'd like to use my position to stop it from happening.

So when you tell me that a conversation is happening like you described, I want to know specifics. What organizations, what teachers? I'm trying to understand if this is a perception you have of the issue through the lens of social media, or if you have actual knowledge since you wrote a specific conversation down that you said happened many times. I was wondering if this conversation was rooted in your experience, or if you had some other source as the basis for this conversation. I'm eager to get to the actual substance because then we can see where the nuance lies.

For example, as proof of your assertion that teachers are choosing books for racist reasons, you linked to a source that shows just the opposite -- that books were chosen because they provide perspectives not present in the existing curriculum. You further claimed that parents are saying "don't put books into the curriculum just because the authors are black", but your own evidence shows that is not happening. So maybe this is where the discrepancy lies. One group has a misperception about the motivations of the other. That's something we can work to solve.

So where is the evidence it is happening? What is leading you and others to claim it is? Because again, as an educator, I want to attack that directly. I can't attack that with vague anecdotes. You don't like it either, right? Help me help you.

Is that really a new trend though? Academia has always fancied itself to be an arbiter of truth. Religion as well, which is why a tension exists between the two, and people like to cast Academia as a religious order (they are not wrong to do so).

You should assume that your students don't know many perspectives on different lifes, nations, cultures, professions, etc. not because they are intolerant, but because how should they know something that they haven't been in contact with their whole lives? So you teach them about the world not because you think they are stupid, but because it is your task to teach them about the world they live in, with the hope that they will make good citizens that in turn are capable of decent choices that create a liveable society for all. You teach them in order to not have them turn into ignorant people.

Political groups that tell you that teaching facts about society and history have the goal of bringing their propaganda into the schools.

The vouch button

side note first, dialectic materialism is as modernist and 'truthy' as it gets. It stands in stark contrast to the the kind of thinking you appear to disagree with.

To the main point, you're honestly just being sentimental. You're calling secular philosophers nihilistic, predatory, accuse them of trickery but you're not actually making a point to be honest. They may be all those things, that doesn't mean their arguments are bad.

The article talks about a very foundational question. Can metaphysics make progress? Is it possible to come to consensus when in fact everyone, as you put it, has to accept someone else's ontological premises in arbitrary fashion?

The answer to that question is probably not, and Wittengestein, Rorty, and the mentioned pragmatists have deflated this kind of discourse successfully. Pay close attention to your own rhetoric

"it's just designed to homogenize and liquify culture to produce nihilistic ideologues who can't be trusted as fellow citizens to share a recourse to truth."

This is not an argument, that's someone saying "don't listen to the devil kids". It's appealing to a notion of truth as a sort of communal protection racket because you don't like the consequences of Rorty et al being right. In fact even worse, you're doing the sort of power play you're accusing the philosophers in question of. "They are trying to homogenize our culture, don't listen to them!, if we don't believe in capital T Truth, everything will fall apart!"