[lit-ideas] Re: Violence as Destruction of Doubt
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 20:53:42 -0700
I'm sorry, but I just managed to lose Andy's reply to my suggestion that
he translate the paragraphs in question into plain English, the one in
which he says that he's read a lot of philosophy that appears senseless,
etc. However, I do remember his saying that, and it is no response at
all, but an instance of the following bad argument.
Some philosophers revel in nonsense.
Paul is a philosopher.
Therefore, Paul revels in nonsense.
So, that I'm a philosopher doesn't mean that I must defend the writings
and rantings of philosophers always and everywhere. (I did say that
whatever can be said can be said clearly, but let it pass, let it pass.)
And I'm no friend of abstractions, unless they can be taken apart in
such a way that one can pick out instances of them in the real world. My
instinctive nominalism leads me to suspect the (Socratic/Platonic) idea
that there must be a substance answering to every substantive. That
there are purposive mental processes which take place without our being
aware of them—trying to remember a name or phrase in the evening, and
finding it 'in one's mind' immediately upon waking the next morning,
e.g.—I have no doubt. That there are actual things answering to the name
'ego,' 'id,' etc. I have all the doubt in the world.
Catch you later.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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