Blurred Visions

Book excerpt: Blurred Visions fills an important gap in the literature on applied philosophy. It explores the relationship between ideological disputes and evidence and attempts to establish the ways in which the intractability of some ideological disputes is a function of the disputants adopting the notion of brute evidence, and the extent to which a change of epistemological venue might affect the resolution and prevention of ideological disputes. It declares that scientific theory and ideology are conceptual frameworks that allow us to make sense of the world that we live in, and contends that recognizing the ideology-ladenness of facts and observations will facilitate the resolution of these disputes by depolarizing their argumentation, thereby making it less likely that they will incite acts of armed aggression.