[lit-ideas] Re: Violence as Destruction of Doubt
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 22:55:40 -0400
> [Original Message]
> From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 9/15/2005 6:06:53 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Violence as Destruction of Doubt
>
> Andy Amago wrote:
>
> > Okay, then, explain it in a sensible way.
>
> Explain what? Are you asking me to make sense out of gibberish or are
> you asking me to 'explain' the toleration of the infidel and the
> destruction of doubt? But before I try to do that, it would help if I
> knew what would count as an answer to your request. The post in question
> does not make sense at the level of plain English; whether one believes
> in the unconscious as an entity or in unconscious mental processes is
> irrelevant to the simple question: what does the post in question
> _mean_? If I believe that 'The Absolute drinks Propinquity,' or
> 'Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,' are meaningless, it's not
> incumbent on me to say what they really mean (for I believe they mean
> nothing) or to give my own explanation of some incoherent state of
affairs.
>
> Help me out here. Anything that can be said can be said clearly.
A.A. Tell this to a philosopher. Some of the stuff I've read is pure
unadulterated gibberish.
Can you
> paraphrase what our contributor is saying (claiming, explaining)? Can
> you say what the question he's purporting to answer is?
>
A.A. No, you're not throwing it back on me. I asked only because every
time one of these papers is posted, instantly there's some sort of
downright nasty put down of it. When pressed as to what the problem is, you
yourself said "the ability to recognize patent nonsense is a useful skill".
If this is patent nonsense, it should be fairly easy to discredit the
substance of it, especially for a philosopher accustomed to abstraction.
So, how is it patent nonsense?
Phil said it's "Utter nonsense! How can there be faith without either the
critical or doubt? And the move from 'projected' to 'split off and
disavowed' is a howler. I marvel that there are people who still take this
psychoanalysis nonsense seriously." He at least made an effort to ask how
there can be faith without doubt. In fact, with that statement I think
he's wrong. Doing it your way, I'd make that statement and move on.
Instead, I'll suggest that I think it's wrong because if one doubts one's
faith and continues to have faith, what other conclusion is there other
than the doubt is meaningless, only something to get past in order to keep
believing? In that vein, he states that the second sentence is a howler
but doesn't tell us why. Without substantiation, it's just an insult.
When I questioned what he would prefer for an explanation instead of
psychoanalysis, he refused to answer. If psychoanalysis is so bad, it
shouldn't be that big a deal to say why one thinks so. In short, if I
believe 2+2=5 is utter nonsense, it's a no brainer to correct me and tell
me that 2+2=4. So, why is this nonsense, and utter and patent nonsense at
that?
For Marlena, what's kick the dog syndrome? It sounds like something Bush
is afflicted with. How does it relate to this article?
Andy Amago
> Robert Paul
> Reed College
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