Matt said to Ian:
...Given the state of the MD (as I felt it) at the point at which I sent the
post (recently), I felt like this was the thing to say. I.e. it seemed like,
while not being contentious, we might be occasionally violating its strictures.
For example, why didn't Dave say all of those neutral things about compassion
and empathy in his expansion of the MoQ to Steve, and not me? One answer might
be because of how he perceives Steve as an interlocutor, and on the other hand
how he perceives me. ...
dmb says:
Please feel free to reply even if my posts are specifically addressed to you.
If I directed my comments about compassion and empathy at Steve rather than
you, it's only because Steve has said many objectionable things about
compassion and empathy, whereas you haven't said much at all.
Steve looks up to you, you know? He calls on you when he gets in trouble. He
gets upset to nearly the same degree when I criticize your view as when I
criticize his. He has attached himself to you. I think of you two as Siamese
twins, philosophically speaking. I'm not saying it's a match made in heaven,
the poet and the accountant. But in this case (the free will debate) it seems
you've decided not to get involved. In fact, I have no idea what you think
about Pirsig's reformulation of the issue and your comments about the "state of
the MD" are just too general to be helpful.
My complaints about Steve's conversational behavior don't seem to be
registering with anyone and your comments did not address them either. Since
his behavior is, I think, outrageously and conspicuously awful, your (and
everyone else's) silence on this matter is really quite baffling to me. Does
anyone know what the hell he's talking about with this notion of free will
behind free will? He says stuff like, "Sure we make choices but we're not free
to choose our choices". Does anyone think that makes any sense at all? If so,
maybe you can explain it to me. Maybe you can explain how there can be moral
responsibility without human agency. That's Steve's claim, even though he's
never once said how that could work. And the linkage between the two shows up
in every dictionary and encyclopedia, but he denies it anyway. Do you think
that defying all that for no apparent reason is a good way to conduct yourself
in a conversation? It's okay to go meta but generalized abstractions are go
ing to gloss over the concrete and actual conversational tactics. I mean, the
guy with a spike in his foot is going to be far more interested in the
particulars of his situation and if you start a conversation about pain and
injury in general, he's going to feel that you're not really addressing his
concrete concerns about very specific items. In that sense, such a movement to
general seem like dismissal of the actual particulars.
Despite that, I did respond to your general "lecture" in a general way. In
general, I think we agree that term usage has to be understood in light of the
context and purpose of that use.
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