John,
As I told you in my PM, I originally sent this to you privately to save you any discomfort you might feel to have it posted publicly, but you have, since then, chosen to publicly label me (and Alex) as an idiot (for not sharing your views on Eastern philosophy), so I don't think you deserve that mercy after all, especially given that this analysis might be interesting to others (it might also be too dry and long for anyone to be interested in, but who knows?).
So, here's our exchange as I see it (the footnotes link to the posts in question). Some of the implicit dynamics from my side are not exactly what I was explicitly thinking at the time, but I think they capture the essence of the exchange. I have clarified it in a few small ways since sending it to you privately.
John[1]: Laird, what do you think of these quotes?
Laird[2]: I accept them to a point, but here's why I think some of them are too extreme [because they imply that knowledge is not even useful, when really it is indispensable in our everyday lives, especially if we are to make responsible decisions].
John[3]: [Implicitly] I either don't care why you think they're too extreme, or at least I'm going to ignore the reason you offer, but [explicitly] I assert anyway through rhetorical questions that they're NOT too extreme.
Laird[4]: OK, well, I can't accept your assertion unless/until you address the reason I just gave you
why I don't accept it.
John[5]: [Implicitly] I still refuse, without saying why, to address your reason, but [explicitly] here are some other justifications for my views [implicitly] that
don't take your reason into account.
Laird[6]: [A little frustrated that John continues to ignore his reasoning] [Implicitly] OK, well, if you're still going to ignore my reasoning, then let me try to express it to you another way, through [explicitly] an example.
John[7]: [Implicitly] I can't deny the sense of your example, so instead I shift the goalposts and hope that you don't notice: even though my position until now has been that these quotes are absolutely correct no matter how extremely you interpret them in their applicability to knowledge (i.e that they apply to "all" knowledge, that "all" knowledge is a "disease"), [explicitly] I now limit their sense to "false" knowledge, "pretended" knowledge and "delusion", [implicitly] which fundamentally changes my claim to one that hardly anyone would disagree with, because it is almost tautological, however, I implicitly conflate it with my original extreme claim, hoping that that extreme claim now stands up in the face of the reason you offer why it doesn't. I also fail to clarify the boundaries of these new types of knowledge that I have introduced. In addition, I introduce a new exception to what has otherwise been my extreme position, that exception being [explicitly] "obvious" truths, [implicitly] and, again, I fail to clarify the boundaries of this new distinction. [Implicitly] Furthermore, even though your example has caused me to radically modify my position without acknowledging that I have done so, [explicitly] I ridicule that example as "silly".
Laird[8]: [Implicitly] OK, you have introduced some exceptions to your original extreme claim without acknowledging that you have done that, but I politely ignore this. Presumably, then, you hope to keep these exceptions as limited as possible, so [explicitly] here's an example to show you that the extent to which you can limit them is very minimal.
John[9]: [Implicitly] I don't have an objection to your example so instead [explicitly] I offer some irrelevancies [implicitly] and hope that they count. [Implicitly] I realise subconsciously that they don't count though, so I try to counter your example in another way, by introducing
another limitation to the originally unlimited domain of my original extreme claim, and again I fail to acknowledge that I am *radically* changing my claim. The new limitation to the domain that I offer is that rather than my original extreme claim that "all" knowledge is useless, [explicitly] now only the domain of "ultimate" knowledge is useless. [Implicitly] Again, I fail to clarify the boundaries of this new limitation, nor to acknowledge that I am conflating a highly controversial claim with a far less controversial one. I reassert though my previously introduced limitation that [explicitly] my claim applies only to "pretended" knowledge, and [implicitly] I offer *some* guidance as to what I mean by this by asserting a false [explicitly] dichotomy between "pretended" knowledge and "obvious" knowledge. [Semi-explicitly] I imply vaguely, whilst making it difficult to recognise that I am doing so, that philosophers and scientists deal in this "pretended" knowledge. [Implicitly] I fail to recognise that to some extent this is irrelevant because at least scientists, and arguably philosophers, mostly deal in a domain other than the one ("ultimate" knowledge) to which I have just restricted my claim.
Laird[10]: [Becoming impatient with the unacknowledged shifting of goalposts and careless thinking] [Explicitly] I call you out on your irrelevancies, your goalpost shifting, and your false dichotomy, and, [implicitly] still hoping that you will at some point acknowledge the original reason I offered you as to why I find the quotes you offered to be too extreme, I reframe that reason in terms of [explicitly] the utility of the middle knowledge - uncertain, provisional, tentative knowledge - that you excluded from your false dichotomy, and I point out that this category of knowledge is by far the largest, and that it is *this* knowledge that philosophers and scientists mostly deal in, not in pretended knowledge.
John[11]: [Implicitly] I reject the category of middle knowledge that you just pointed out to me [semi-explicitly] by conflating it with one of the poles of my false dichotomy, the "obvious" pole, [implicitly] and I re-assert using new terms my previous unacknowledged-as-false dichotomy, this time using, rather than "obvious" and "pretend" knowledge, [explicitly] the terms "really" knowing and "presuming" to know. In addition, [implicitly] I straw-man your response to the Socrates quote, [explicitly] putting explicit words in your mouth [implicitly] even though you have already provided me with a different explicit response that means nothing of the sort. [Implicitly] Even though you have offered me the service of patiently and politely pointing out to me the carelessness of my thinking on a philosophy forum, [explicitly] I reject that service as "robotic", and suggest that I want to kill you.
[remove the space after "http" to reconstruct the URL - I have to do it this way to avoid the 3-URL-per-post limit]
[1] http ://theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7116&start=325#p138357
[2] http ://theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7116&start=325#p138364
[3] http ://theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7116&start=350#p138367
[4] http ://theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7116&start=350#p138369
[5] http ://theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7116&start=350#p138371
[6] http ://theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7116&start=350#p138374
[7] http ://theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7116&start=350#p138375
[8] http ://theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7116&p=138411#p138394
[9] http ://theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7116&start=375#p138401
[10] http ://theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7116&start=375#p138410
[11] http ://theabsolute.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7116&start=375#p138412
Where does this leave us? With two radically different claims, the original highly controversial claim that no matter how extremely you interpret a quote that all knowledge is useless (a "disease"), that quote is correct, and your adjusted, almost tautological claim that only 'pretended', 'false' and 'delusional' knowledge in the domain of 'ultimate' knowledge is useless. Also, it leaves us with a continuing false dichotomy and the denial of a whole category of knowledge that is relevant to your claims: uncertain, provisional and tentative knowledge.
This leads us to the major problem in your thinking: conflation. You make highly controversial claims that you then attempt to justify by conflating them with far less controversial, even approaching the tautological, claims - and when people call you out on your equivocation, you complain about your critics being too "literal". You're on a philosophy forum, it's your task to be consistent in your claims, and to acknowledge when you are changing them, and preferably to explain why you are changing them. How are we to even know whether or not we agree with you when you are constantly changing your position? If you're going to make controversial claims, and someone offers you reason for disbelieving those claims, then the appropriate response is to address that reason, not to adjust your claim to something less controversial that avoids the offered reason without acknowledging your change, and hope that your original controversial claim still stands up (it doesn't).
I think there is a lot that we do agree on, but you want to manipulate my agreement with certain claims into agreement with other extreme and controversial claims, and that's just bad sportsmanship. Am I wasting my time here? It's very possible. It really depends on you though.
By the way:
SeekerOfWisdom wrote:Don't try to direct what happens
But that's
mostly what you've been trying to do on this forum since you got here, whether it be by trying to direct people to form a private off-forum group, or to direct them through zealous preaching to accept your views.