Wednesday, May 14, 2008

an essentially persuasive model of facilitation...

I wonder if the honourable member thinks normal people really talk like this.

John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative)

My starting point is that I have always felt that where the science is essentially
persuasive, as I believe it to be, we should have a model of facilitation. We
should go with embryo research because of the tremendous human opportunities that
it offers. That is to say, I take an empiricist, pragmatic, instrumental view,
rather than the view that some abstract principle should inveigh against the
possibility that such research should be allowed or extended.


Traduc:

If the Great God Science says we can do it, then it's OK because whatever we can do, we should do.

But this isn't "some abstract principle", it's the empiricist view, and therefore the correct one. Abstract is bad, you see...and so are principles...but that isn't a principle, you understand...just an empiricist view.

And there's a difference.

And the difference is shut the hell up you weird religiousy people. That's what.



Seriously, do these people ever hear themselves?

But I'm disappointed. I am used to hearing this kind of blithering gibberish from Canadian MPs, but it wasn't that long ago that we had real schools in this country. Honestly, this could have come out of the mealy mouth of a Quebec MP.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your sins must have been very great indeed, Hilary, for God to have created for you this especially stupendous penance for the sake of your immortal soul.

Mark S. Abeln said...

"empiricist, pragmatic, instrumental"

Interesting code-words. They come from John Dewey, who was responsible for the current mess of the government schools in the U.S. of A. "Learn by doing" was his creed, and this is now being applied to the subjects of sex, drugs, and suicide.

The UK has plenty of its own bad philosophers, but I suppose it is fashionable for a 'conservative' to get their ideas from the U.S.A. instead of from the so-called 'Europe'.