| | Ed:
>If all else fails, use your powers of mental association (YOUR highest mental faculty) and remark that your "merely-apparent" evasion in the matter really depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is - this has worked for someone before, so it should work again for you (people don't learn to "pick-up" on shady tactics, they can be used repeatedly, and with reckless abandon).
DB:
Well, this really says it all - if somewhat incoherently. According to Ed, when “all else fails”, I use the “shady tactic” of playing games with the meanings of words, such as “is”. I use this tactic “repeatedly and with reckless abandon” .
Ed:
DB, you've fallen into my trap (well, sort of). Like a dragster with lots of power (of the analytical type) but little to guide it, or steer this power (such as, perhaps: a fundamental principle of noncontradictory integration?), all I have to do is to get you to "hit the gas" and then you go careening off into the guard rail ... a tumbling ball of flames and wreckage.
You did - in fact - do, as I would - and did - predict. You've found the weakest spot in my argument (like the good analytical, foundationless thinker that you are) and you've isolated it and abstracted it away from all else. I don't know whether to say "Bravo!" or just yawn and look at my watch.
The point you brought up was a mere analogy (explaining its "weakness"), which was used more for an illustrative purpose, than for any direct, univocal one. The referent of the analogy was Mr. Shady, himself: Slick Will Clinton (sex-scandal trial). I'm not sure that you picked up on this, but I would put it past you. I wasn't sure whether to leave this weak analogy in the post, but it has become a blessing in disguise (it validates "my take" on your modus operandi, and with such eloquence and finality - I could not have imagined).
As is more common than not, I find that your words are best understood when distilled of all the flamboyant nonessentials. Your response above (distilled) reads as such: According to Ed ... I use the ... tactic of playing games with the meanings of words. As I said above, the Clinton analogy was just that, so your inference here is a non sequitur. In this case however, I must say that the UNDISTILLED wording shines a brighter light on your guilt of fallacious reasoning - just as detailed lies are more clearly seen to be wrong than vague ones are.
DB:
Truly, in the Missing-The-Point-Olympics, Ed takes the Gold.
Ed:
Aaaagh, some more of the banter so characteristic of you DB. I admit I've even become comfortable with your predictable, though sarcastic, nature (and would be taken aback by a "suddenly-sincere" response from you). I feel a guilty sense of comfort and warmth, knowing what and how you will respond to things. Like I felt with my first Teddy Bear - with its prominent and stable features and fur that I could examine, and come back to, where I had left off the day before.
DB:
Lordamighty, man! (….pauses mid-post to slowly bang head several times on the desk…) what “tactic” do you think I’ve just spent most of the last couple of hundred posts exhaustively CRITICISING!?
Ed:
It's such a joy to watch you work, DB - after finding that weakest link which you have nominated as "someone's position." Enthroned for effect, you carefully calculate how to get the most "buck" for your "bang" in overthrowing the mighty opponent King.
I wonder, do you know (deep down) that you are playing a child's game - as I did with my GI Joes? A game where you know who the winner will be - because you've precisely picked the parameters entailing that desired outcome. I used to "give" MY GI Joes special powers (or at least special kung-fu "training"), in case it came down to a "man-to-man" fight with the enemy. I think you give yourself special powers DB, but the games you play are more important for the future of humanity (without a foundation, you may not see this).
DB:
Find one example – just one in over 200 posts – where I’ve used such a method, other than for the express purpose of exposing the pointlessness of it!
Ed:
Again, excellent work, but predictably pointless.
DB:
The case you cite above only exists in your imagination, nowhere else. I challenge you directly to find anything remotely similar, or in fact any place where I have claimed ANY position of mine "depends" on the meaning of ANY term - let alone “is”!
Ed:
Okay ... now I'm yawning.
DB:
To recap: spread over the last 200 posts, and on this thread too, I have
1) demonstrated the (first of three) serious logical problems with this method(eg: post 66 this thread)
2) supplied and explained a method of definition that avoids these problems (methodological nominalism, as opposed to methodological essentialism) (post 56)
3) supplied a method of argument that exposes the users of this tactic (ie: focussing arguments on proposals and problems, rather than the meanings of words) (p 56 again and pretty much everywhere else)
Ed:
And here is where Rodney's insights are beginning to "wear-off" on me. I am starting to actually believe that you actually believe these things. But don't you see that absolute precision is scorned by us both (and even by Rand)? Instead of acknowledging this, you keep insisting on throwing the "accurate" baby out with the "precise" bath-water (and "propose" other "problems" - such as the ring of scum left around the bathtub). Damnit DB, read my SOLO QUOTES quote on this issue of precision in philosophy (AS WELL AS THE THREAD BELOW IT).
DB:
So, rather than using this intellectual “shady tactic” “repeatedly and with reckless abandon”, in fact I have NEVER used it, and have spent my time arguing extensively AGAINST it! Ed, I hope you can now see why I cannot take what you are saying remotely seriously.
Ed:
I could see BEFORE why you "cannot take" what I'm saying seriously (I didn't need to see another straw-man fall in order to be blessed with such a profound insight).
DB:
Now the remaining question is this: what, if any, intellectual standards does Ed set himself when he decides to attack someone – especially when he declares them to be “evil” – and how honest is he in terms of facing up to his mistakes?
Ed:
A fair question, indeed. While my mistakes are few - and far between - I have, in over 200 posts in this forum, racked up my fair share (perhaps a dozen of them; clear and identifiable). In times like these, an example is in order.
Not too long ago, I presumed to be able to silence dissenters with rock-solid reasoning based on a firm, axiomatic foundation. Okay, so I got a little cocky. Claiming to be able to predict bankruptcy by applying Euclidean geometrics to torn dollar bills, if exchanged for full currency; I failed to integrate that serial numbers are printed on bills in positions that precisely thwart the mechanics I was employing for my attainment of certainty on the matter. When this fatal flaw in my reasoning had been pointed out to me, I promptly and graciously replied with full admission of error and promised not to do it again (for awhile, at least - lest I be sent into the corner, while the others get to play).
DB, I've made mistakes and owned up to them (and given a key example). I'm wondering: would you - will you - do the same?
Ed
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