And PS Matt, I should acknowledge your point ... And yes, a deliberate straw-man usually requires some pre-meditated "building" to have occurred in advance. (But again usually people wouldn't jump to the straw-man conclusion, without also perceiving some prior evidence ... anyway.)
Ian On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Ian Glendinning <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Matt, good stuff, several points ... > > (1) Love or trust ... I introduced the word "love" with Nick Lowe's > ironic quote, for attention-grabbing value - simply for the same > effect, that it's a non-PC word in serious conversation .... in > reality we are talking about trust, agreed. Though, now you mention > it, what is so funny 'bout ... ;-) > > (2) I don't believe any of the Socratic rules of debate apply unless > there is a "stock" of trust either presumed or explicitly built up. > Innocent until proven guilty or shown innocent. But of course once > destroyed it's very tough to recover. (This is my main point) Anyone > starting a conversation assuming mistrust is wasting everyone's time. > > (3) The "accidental" straw man - accidental misrepresentation. As you > say I would preferentially always assume the latter (I'm a cock-up > theorist not a conspiracy theorist) and very rarely (openly) accuse > anyone of a deliberate straw man (even if I may suspect one) > ...because trust is worth preserving (see above). (We're only talking > about it now, even suggesting it in examples, because it's on the > table.) > > (4) Once we have open accusations of motivated deliberate (weasely) > misrepresentation, we have that topic on the table ... and I simply > believe it is worth pausing to fix the lost trust, before returning to > the contentious point(s). I do accuse dmb of not taking this point > seriously - it may be water off a duck's back to him that half the > people here don't seem to love him - but blood is thicker than water > (gratuitous inappropriate metaphor alert.) > > Stick around Matt, we need your educated common sense. > Ian > > On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 8:29 PM, Matt Kundert > <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Hey Ian, >> >> Ian said: >> As I said in the other thread, by agreeing with Arlo aparently against >> me, you were actually dis-agreeing with his straw man, not me, that >> somehow I was suggesting we need to be some unconditional >> love-in - nothing could be further from the truth. Trust and respect >> have to be earned, and that starts by giving a little, getting inside the >> other person (not just saying you're doing it). >> >> Matt: >> I think you inflated a little bit my meaning in saying, "I also think Arlo >> is right to think against Ian that love isn't the right thing to talk >> about." I can grant your intention to have meant "love" in the poetic >> sense I called nice for utopic formulas, and that Arlo may have >> misperceived that intention (I have no sense one way or the >> other)--I can grant both of those things, yet I still think that the word >> "love" is the wrong word to use to name the object I'm concerned >> with in this context. It seems your concerned with that same object, >> which makes us jointly concerned with the same set of >> consequences. I know you never meant a "love-in," but I think "love" >> is the wrong way to formulate the issue, under which you also stick >> "trust and respect." I wanted to say against that, that it does make >> a practical difference at times to distinguish trust and love, as you >> don't in this particular formula. >> >> I haven't articulated what practical differences and where they might >> occur, but it's a supposition I would maintain. Perhaps you have no >> particular truck with dubbing the object of this discussion "love" or >> "trust," and think this is a nit upon which nothing hangs. Even that >> being the case, rhetoric does matter, even if it isn't the rhetoric of >> covering insults with insincerities. Rhetoric matters sometimes to >> be able to see the right conceptual distinctions to make. Rhetoric >> matters for intellectual, as well as social, reasons. And it's the >> intellectual matter I'm concerned with in dubbing it "trust" against >> "love," though this is to bring into better view our social >> responsibilities. >> >> Might I also remind you of this passage from my post: "Straw men >> have nothing to do with sincerity. The trouble is that accusing >> others of _deploying one as a trick_ implies that they are >> knowingly being malicious, are being insincere." You have not >> done this. However, I find the attribution of a straw man a little >> disarming in this context. I would think a straw man is something >> built, and usually over time. Can we not get somebody wrong >> without thereby building a straw man? >> >> Perhaps Arlo has been attributing this wrong intention to you for >> some time (I again plead ignorance), in which case it makes >> sense for you to call it a straw man (if, of course, you've also >> spent time trying to correct him on this count, corrections gone >> unheeded) and to say that I accidentally followed into its >> conceptually scope makes sense. Granting all of that: I still can't >> help but think that attributions of the straw-man fallacy create >> more emotional hay than they do in helping clear the landscape of >> misapprehensions (excuse my mixed metaphors). Too many fires >> are lit from the remains, which just adds to our heat problem and >> obscures our vision. >> >> Matt >> 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
