Unidian wrote:No, we can tell the difference between people that make objections from understanding and those that don't.
Oh, rubbish. You know me, so you ought to know better. I understand QRS views quite well enough, so I'm qualified to judge who else does or does not understand them.
That would be true other than when you're in those moods where you desire to denigrate and take cheap shots at QRS. In such moods you're not qualified to judge much of anything.
And Laird does in fact understand them, whether you and David like it or not. He happens to reject them to a considerably greater degree than I do, but that does not mean he misunderstands them. Quit trying to save face in the eyes of the audience and remember who you're talking to, please.
I'm sorry, but it
does mean he doesn't understand them. Making this more generic, if any person rejects the construct: "Form is formlessness; formlessness is form", dismissing it as nonsensical, contradictory, meaningless or some such, is he doing so because he understands it? Indeed,
can he be doing so on that basis? You know quite well the answer to that is, no, he cannot.
His reticence to elaborate on them has exactly nothing to do with this forum, and you know it. But, hey, I see you're in a cheap shot mood.
It's got
everything to do with the tone and atmosphere of this forum, and my saying so is by no means a "cheap shot."
Yes it does. Please point out all the other public places where Laird has made his views available for genuine scrutiny. The fact is he doesn't wish to, per se, not even privately. Making that desire of his about
this forum is just crap, Nat. I call bullshit x 10.
This forum, like many others, is more than willing to discount someone's views based on a certain understanding of their motivations.
Motivations don't arise out of a vacuum. They can also arise out of a value set and a worldview. Thus, motives are not separate entities.
While I can't elaborate out of a respect for Laird's privacy, I can say that Laird is not being at all unreasonable to suppose that his views will be treated in much the same way my own views are blasted by people like Victor, should he be excessively forthcoming about the circumstances of his life..
What's not good for him is nevertheless good for everyone else, eh?
Laird has provided his thesis.
Yes, and in my view he should not have. I can't fathom why he even did so. But he did, and did so on a discussion forum, not a personal blog.
If he chooses not to defend it, then simply dismiss it and move on.
How about I just delete it as spam? You just reduced it to that level. If it was a post by "lunaticforchrist" and contained religious drivel and the proclamation that the poster had no intention of admitting himself to analysis, you'd think his post spam, right?
Attempting to drag the man down roads he does not want to travel is an example of what I meant when I stated that "this forum is decidedly lacking in basic human decency."
Oh, the poor, baby. Shall we wipe his dirty bum together? You first, though. Laird is
perfectly entitled to do nothing. His desire to not open himself up to scrutiny is what it is.
It's his prerogative. He's also free to completely ignore my calls for him to do so. That is always and ever his choice to make.
My issue is that that prerogative, juxtaposed with his equally strong desire to vociferously attack and deconstruct other people's views, with all the accusations of intellectual dishonesty and sundry petty stratagems that goes with it, doesn't sit well with me. It offends my sense of fair play, of sportsmanship and integrity. It's like a kid who walks into a playground game of footy and says, "I can tackle all of you as hard as I like, but you can't tackle me; you can only tag me."
As I say, it doesn't sit well with me. You can chalk that up to a petty aspect of my personality if you like, I don't really care. If Laird constrained his deconstructions to a purely academic exercise, I probably wouldn't mind so much. But he goes way beyond that and that therefore changes the "rules" for me.
