Hi Dmb, There is a difference between textual evidence and contextual evidence. I understand the need to bridge philosophers so as to provide a broader metaphysics. Such bridging adds to the metaphysics but certainly does not define it, something you appear to be trying to do. If you want to debate James, there are forums which allow you to do so. Here we may debate James as it applies to MoQ. I find many of your quotes not to be contextually relevant, and somewhat misleading. If you provide a James quote along with a preponderance of why such a quote fits with your understanding of MoQ, I can certainly debate that through my understanding. I can bring in quotes from James or a plethora of philosophers to do so, if that adds meaning for you.
It is difficult for me to deny your position, since you do not present it, but simply resort to quotes from other philosophers, as if that suffices. You then claim that such quotes explicitly support your understanding of MoQ, without any evidence. I cannot read your mind, but only read what you post. I have yet to see some fundamental premises of MoQ coming through your posts, instead you choose to side-step the whole issue, and speak in vague terms and of course with what you consider to be definitive quotes. We can all surf the net and find quotes, it is explaining the relevance of such quotes to our position that is missing. So, dmb, I would have to say that the ball is in your court. Cheers, Mark On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 6:43 AM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Mark said: > > ... I can easily find selective quotes from James which will completely deny > dmb's position. > > > dmb says: > If you can easily dispute my claims with quotes from James, then why don't > you? In the world of philosophy quotes from philosophers is considered to be > one of the best kind of evidence. It's called textual evidence and no book or > paper is published unless there is a whole lot of it. > Selective reading is a different thing altogether. That's a bogus method > wherein one ignores all the evidence that doesn't fit. A person who does this > will usually find himself in a contradictory position wherein he ends up > having to defend the quoted philosopher from the same quoted philosopher. > Unless you're comparing quotes from two separate works that were written > years apart, when the various pieces of textual evidence fail to support each > other in a coherent way you can bet a large pile of money that the > interpreter has made a fundamental mistake somewhere in his reading. That's > the problem with selective reading or cherry-picking. Choosing the right > quotes to make a case, however, is just standard practice. > So if there is any substance to your claim and you really can deny my > position, then you'd be doing us all a favor if you dished it up. Then we'd > have something like a legitimate dispute and that's what a real conversation > should be like around here. But, as it stands, you've offered nothing but a > vaguely insulting fake promise. That sort of thing is worth less than nothing > at all. > > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
