Leggo my Pomo

[Mike Weaver]

(Craig wrote 
>...everything is contingent...)

Max wrote:
>I don't think everything's contingent, actually.  (I might ask,
>what is it supposed to be contingent on?)

I think that in this contingent means possible but not certain,  
an acknowledgement of the 'butterfly effect' of chaos theory,
that probability may favour particular outcomes, but certainty 
is not possible, because small chance events may set off an
unpredictable chain of effects.

Max:
>Again I ask: who said the Great Chain of Being was bad?  I fear that you
>assume that "old ideas" are blind and stupid and superstitious, and that
>lots of the People are walking around under their spell, but that you have
>the light of "new ideas" (however dim and flickering) and are determined to
>replace their ignorance with your truth. 

and in a later post:

>Also, post-structuralists generally seem to have an unreasoned grudge
>against the whole idea of "metaphysics" that comes down to us from Plato


We are not talking about old and new ideas,   Idealist and metaphysical thought
 were for centuries the utterly dominant forms,  embraced by the ruling classes
 (i.e church and state) and treated as the limits of rational discourse.
Materialist
and dialectical forms were advocated by other Ancient Greek thinkers 
(Democritus and Heraclitus being probably the best known) The last three 
hundred years or so have seen an elaboration of the materialist and dialectical
viewpoints which have been taken on board by sufficient people so as to 
mount a serious challenge to the ascendency of idealism and metaphysics as 
adequate lenses through which to view existence, and to the political systems
 which embrace them.

Max again:
>Q:  If a thing cannot be concretely defined, does that mean it is merely an
>illusory construction?  Or might it exist in some perpetually indefinable
>way?

For some concepts it isn't that they are perpetually indefineable but are,
(and I
 quote William Robinson here):
"...what philosopher W.B. Gallie has termed [as] *essentially contested
concept[s].*
This refers to a concept in which different and competing definitions exist,
such 
that terms themselves are problematic since they are not reducible
to*primitives.*
Each definition yields different interpretations of social reality."   

Their place at the focus of active political and/or  philosophical struggles
means 
that assertions of particular definitions are rallying points and articles
of faith that
 give a group a collective identity.  
IMO

Mike
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
   Our choicest plans have fallen through,
      Our airiest castles tumbled over.
      Because of lines we neatly drew, 
      And later neatly stumbled over.
             Piet Hein                       
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^