Your impression that I was being relentlessly ad hominem was correct, Michael. I tried twice to convey why I was doing that:
"I will [get off my high horse], Bo, when you quit stepping into a thread with accusations like, "Not playing by the rules, Cheerskep." "To rephrase what I tried to convey with my last posting: Attack the argument, not the man, Michael, and you'll find the man less inclined to climb onto his high horse and charge at you like this." My point on this thread was to argue this: to take four or more distinguishable notions, each with a regularly associated word or phrase to convey them, and label them all with one word is counter-productive in the likes of philosophy of art. My original protest was against the assertion, "Whatever exists is needed." I understand the impulse to say that, but I say it ignores many things that exist but which almost all of us would refrain from calling "needed". Some things, I maintain, we consciously desire but would admit we don't really need -- like that cookie I just ate. William added his notion of the unconscious yearning. I still maintain that almost all of us harbor connotations to 'need' that make the locution, "Your cancer exists, therefore it is needed," objectionable. I do understand the argument that the start of the cancer was necessitated by certain prior biochemical events. But there is too often a shadowy connotation that if something is "needed" it is good, condonable -- too often for us ever to agree to call a cancer "needed". If an airplane crashes in an urban area and "the result" is the destruction of a dozen houses and a school, it feels alien to accepted usage to say either the plane or its crashing "needed" to destroy the school. We might say natural laws necessitated the ruin of the school, but we'd shrink from saying they "needed" it. I opined that there are times when the words 'require' or 'necessitate' would, for the sake of enhanced clarity, be preferable to the word 'need'. Let's each agree to dismount from our chargers and examine the argument. ************** Feeling the pinch at the grocery store? Make meals for Under $10. (http://food.aol.com/frugal-feasts?ncid=emlcntusfood00000002)
