At 01:02 PM 6/18/99 -0500, Mike Scoles wrote:
>"Dr. Bob Wildblood" wrote:
>
>> Honest to God and to Wundt, this is starting to be a series of personal
>> attacks and not a reasonable discussion.
>
>I apologize if anything that I contributed to this thread appeared to be a
>personal attack on other list members. That was not my intent. Instead,
I was
>raising what seems to be a legitimate question--and one worthy of
discussion.
>That is, can the content of an argument made by an individual, on ethics or
>any other topic, be analyzed separately from characteristics of that
individual?
>I would say that it can.
>
>
Since I was the one who stimulated the above statement from Mike Scoles, I
will respond. I agree with linda w's position on this statement. I can
separate Thomas Jefferson's contributions to the development of our
republican form of government in spite of the fact that he had an affair
and possibly children with a house slave. I can separate decisions that
William Jefferson Clinton makes on matters of national security from the
fact that he did evade military service (along with millions of other young
men of that time) and in spite of the fact that his personal behavior in
regard to women seems to be on the sleezy side. I can't separate
statements that Adolph Hitler makes on racial equality/inequality from the
manner in which he directed the death of many millions of people. It's
like so many other important things that we spend our time trying to
understand (whether that understanding come through laboratory research or
through the use of reasoning); i.e., it is extremely complicated, it tends
to divide people into camps, and there is absolutely no way to arrive at a
conclusion that can be supported by empirical evidence.
In the words of another person named King, "Can't we all just get along?"
