[MD] Essentials for target practice

[John Carl]

dmb:

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 11:32 AM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> John said:
>  So dmb, the way you describe this process is that you're the art critic, and all the other posters are the artists.  Since you portray yourself as the discriminator here. I don't think that's a good idea.
>
> dmb says:
>
> YOU don't think it's a good idea to discriminate between good ideas and bad ones?

John:

What I said, dave, is I don't think it's a good idea for YOU to be the
discriminator, and all of us mere pupils in your classroom.

Dmb ridiculously continues:

That's ridiculous on so many levels that I don't even know where to
begin. You're doing exactly what you say shouldn't be done;
discriminating. And posting ideas and criticisms of those ideas are
the essence of what we're supposed to be doing.

John:

I agree.  But I'm not the one attempting to shut down views
antithetical to my own.  I'm not the one who ceases dialogue when it's
not going my way.  I'm not the one who thinks that a huge proportion
of humanity (theism) should be excluded from the dialogue on Quality.

ahem.

dmb:

That's what makes the process work, that's how we sift out the better
ideas and get rid of the bad ones. Just because I described my
perspective, which is what you asked about, certainly doesn't mean I'm
the only one participating in this process or that I'm the sole
arbiter. Who doesn't post their opinions and critique the posted
opinions of others? I mean, it goes without saying because everyone
can plainly see that. Like I said, if you're posting ideas that are so
weak or confused that they can be disputed by a common dictionary, you
probably don't belong here. That's actually setting the bar pretty
low, don't you think? Or do you suppose encyclopedia are just too
elitist?

John:

You misconstrued my prior criticisms of wiki and SEP.  The point I was
making was that they also cannot be the sole arbiters of Quality.
Especially in areas where its known, admittedly by reading other
experts,  that the mainstream view has got it all wrong in some areas.
 Acceptance of the MoQ   is one such area and I have much support (and
more all the time) from other experts, that acceptance of Royce is
another.

For instance, I've become quite enamored of an article by John Durham
Peters on Jorge Luis Borges and Royce.  He also refutes your auto-wiki
reactionary label of Royce as Hegelian:

"Here we should pause to consider the irregularities of interna-
tional philosophical reception. That Borges calls Royce a Hegelian
shows his debt to between-war English-language philosophical
doxa, a view that misunderstood both Royce and Hegel. First,
Hegel was never an absolute idealist in the English style. Late
nineteenth-century Anglo-American idealists inflated Hegel to
such a degree that James mocked them for acting as if they were
going up in a hot-air balloon every time the notion of the tran-
scendental Ego crossed their minds (1: 365). German and French
thinkers would rediscover a very different, more worldly and dy-
namic (i.e. Marxist) Hegel in the 19 0s and 1930s, a Hegel that
did not start to appear in English until well into the second half
of the twentieth century. Second, Royce is not exactly a Hegelian.
He partook in a much wider legacy of post-Kantian idealism than
just Hegel, and was critical of Hegel on several counts, includ-
ing his hostility to the empirical sciences and his neglect of logic
and mathematics.

Royce’s philosophy was: “post-Kantian, empirically modified, Idealism,
somewhat influenced by Hegel, but Royce’s Spirit of Modern Philosophy
clearly demonstrates his debt to
nineteenth-century thought, including a large dose of  Schopenhauerian
motives, with a dash
of Fichte added” (Clendenning, 1 ).

We can thus forgive Borges
the expedient of “hegeliano.”

(tho not dmb, who should know better than to just consult his wiki)

Though Royce called his philoso-
phy absolute idealism for most of his career, his thinking grew
increasingly close to James, eventually leading to a final position
he called, without considering it an oxymoron, “absolute pragma-
tism” (Royce, Problem of Christianity). It is certainly fair to
include Royce under the broad pragmatist umbrella, at least as a
participant in the conversation."



dmb:

Am I just being a snob or is this whole thing suppose to be about QUALITY?

John:

Exactly.  And what is good?  Do we NEED ANYONE to TELL US THESE
THINGS?????  If it's simply a matter of looking it up in Academically
defined and summarized articles, then I guess we can all just sit back
and stop thinking, eh?

dmb:

 Man, it sure would be nice to simply assume that everyone here truly
and genuinely cares about intellectual excellence. That's what
everyone shoots for in their own efforts and that's what everyone
admires most in the efforts of others. Being smart and right doesn't
mean you can't be funny or colorful or artful or even snarky. Quite
the opposite. Who wouldn't like to read or write something that has
all that and more?

John (blushing): hey, I agree completely.  Your welcome.

But may I point out that my main beef here with you, is that while I'm
open and willing to your participation and dialogue, you are closed to
mine.

So I'm more moral than you are.  Nyah-nyah.


John - finally allowed participation in the dialogue