[MD] Intellectual Level

[david buchanan]

Horse said to Platt:
I asked for answers to questions that are fundamental to Marsha's ideas about reification. As usual, and as I thought would happen, no answers were forthcoming. Only evasion. This has been going on all year (and longer) with a number of members of MD. That's what I'm saying.


Platt replied to Horse:
I don't see anything in the rules about a participant's obligation to answer another's questions. Is this a new mandate you intend enforce?


dmb says:
If I understand Platt's childish "logic" he's saying that if Marsha isn't allowed to be insincere, dishonest, and evasive then Horse is a tyrant. If I understand him, cheating is okay so long as there is no rule against it or no ruler to enforce it. 
Leaving aside the fact that this "reasoning" is deeply insulting to Horse, this response raises a question; why would any self-respecting amateur philosopher have a problem with the "rules" against such evasions. Why would any thinker object to the "rules" against any form of intellectual dishonestly? Aren't moral people sickened by such behavior? Isn't it the intellectual equivalent of an obscenity? Wouldn't a decent person respond to such a charge with a substantial answer instead of more evasions? Horse says there has been a whole year of these evasions and I can testify to a long history of evasions from Marsha too. It's just not right and I think it's really sad that anybody needs to explain how or why it's so bad. How can a grown up person not know this already?

Sigh.


I think anyone, including Horse, has the right to complain about things like that. I think every self-respecting MOQer should consider it their duty to cry foul in a situation such as this.