it's about time that pen-l discussed a worthwhile question!
------------------------
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carrol Cox [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 9:12 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:31166] Re: "Western Rationality"
>
>
>
>
> Ian Murray wrote:
> >
> >
> > Who the hell are you to unilaterally -- no,
> monopolistically -- decide what
> > is and is not a legitimate question on this list? Is this list not a
> > manifestation of a collective practice or are we, in your
> readings of post
> > on this list, all solipsistic-monadic deceptive avatars engaged in a
> > multilogue of the willfully misinterpretive?
> >
>
> I'm not so doing -- I don't have the power. Hence my posts
> were but one
> voice in a larger conversation, were they not?
>
> The denial of the question is _always_ an alternative (among many) to
> anyone's question.
>
> Is God Triune?
>
> Those of us who are not Christians can only say, the question has no
> purchase, it presumes an illicit set of presuppositions.
>
> There are probably many alternative responses to my question, too. In
> general I deny that free-floating questions, that is
> questions separated
> from actual contexts, are legitimate: rather, they are disguised
> statements, more or elss designed to forbid response to the actual
> statement being made. The best way (perhaps the only way) on
> a maillist
> to ask a question is to _answer_ it, letting the question be
> implicit in
> the answer.
>
> Incidentally, in my experience, this is a good pedagogical
> principle as
> well; my awareness of it stems from childhood, in one of the two
> interesting statements I ever found in the _Readers Digest_ -- one of
> their little fillers. A child asks her mother where she came from. The
> mother gives a half-hour answer on human sexuality and
> reproduction. The
> child then responds: that's interesting. But Billy comes from
> St. Louis,
> Sally comes from Milwaukee. Where do _I_ come from?" My practice as a
> teacher was to insist that students give _some_ sort of answer, no
> matter how absurd, to any question they raised before I would
> answer it.
> The practice worked, and I usually avoided what I suspect is
> one of the
> major sources of student passivity.
>
> The third-grade student asks a question. The teacher replies
> at length.
> She asks, does that answer your question. The student, despairing of
> having the actual question answered, responds with a Yes, and
> vows never
> to submit herself to that kind of futility again.
>
> Questions by themselves are almost always impossibly
> ambiguous -- _even_
> when they are in good faith. I know your questions are always in good
> faith. I won't say as much for most questions raised on LBO.
>
> Carrol
>
>
