Re: Try listening to the real ideas and ignore vitriolic attacks

Jim said:
<< We actually did have quite a long discussion of this topic. I don't see
the point in expecting him to go over all this again when it wasn't heard
the first time. >>

As I recall, arguments and (perhaps mostly) defenses were made for lots of
relevant but little points (mostly by you, not by John O.), but the central
assertion -- though it was defended, however successfully, against
attacks -- was never demonstrated or had the basis for our ability to assert
it explained. Perhaps such demonstration or explanation is impossible, or
perhaps it's too subtle and complex for this medium, or perhaps it's just
too subtle and complex for anybody to take the time to spell it out here
(though no one has yet explicitly claimed any of these, so far as I recall).
But what people have been asking for, I think, in the authorial-intent
debate and now in this resurgence of its leading characters, is an answer to
the question: "Why should I believe this assertion?" People made assertions
that we shouldn't believe it, and those assertions were argued against at
length. But I don't remember that specific question ever being answered,
and I think that this absence is what John G. and Daniel have been poking
at.

John O. has explicitly (and perhaps wisely) refused to debate, but John G.
has not -- at least I think he has not -- asked for a debate. Perhaps John
O. will implicitly refuse the explanation because he knows it is likely to
become a debate, but it does seem important to me that some sort of
explanation or demonstration was asked for, that it was -- so far as I
remember -- never provided (perhaps for good reason, but never provided
anyway) and that people (perhaps not all of them, but people) DID hear what
was said the first time and tried to take it seriously.

-robbie

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Received on Tue Mar 4 19:37:13 2003