Negative persona (mask) inhibits learning

tinyg,

I think you will generally find that reading through the correspondence histories of members of this forum may result in a change in the tone of your own posts as a comparative "newcomer".

On another thread I demonstrated to coberst the standard academic method of "making his case" which he himself acknowledged as having to make him re-think about my status as a "negative respondent". Since then however nothing has changed.

that's probably a given anywhere, fresco, but i wouldn't have made the point to you unless i thought you'd appreciate it.

i certainly took the chance that it was a useless point i was making, but i didn't think you'd mind. if you did, i simply retract it. with a few noteable exceptions aimed at extraordinarily arrogant people (i don't count you among them, i'm referring largely to trolls) this is the attitude i would generally prefer to post with. other than that, and occasional misunderstandings, i'm only human. but your point is noted.

tinyg.

When I think about it, some of us "old-timers" are probably trying to maintain "standards" of philosophical debate. These standards include presenting a balanced argument rather than merely expressing a one-sided opinion. Irrespective of that factor, it is useful to bear in mind the individual psychologies which bring some respondents specifically to an internet forum. As a general rule, for example, we might say that the unusual phenomenon of multiple forum blitzing (of which coberst is but one example) is indicative of some pressing personal agenda beyond the particular issues under "discussion". Because of this, we cannot be sure whether the "topic" is the central issue.

i sympathize, in fact i think i've said as much (but not very often.) still, when it comes to that sort of thing, i try to give credit where due. i do think some of coberst's points are interesting, and (again,) whether he likes it or not, we're free to discuss them (or ignore them) or even criticize them according to their merits or lack thereof.

i'm curious about the "multiple forum blitzing" you mentioned, not because i question whether coberst does that, just because i think it's an interesting string of words. if you could elaborate on that briefly and just for my own curiousity, i'd appreciate it. what's the difference between that and simply being active on more than one forum?

I would submit in response that any exchange in which the mere request for examples is considered "pushing" is doomed to devolve into drivel even before it started.



You bet there's a way: providing examples to back up one's arguments. It's the only way one's claims can be evaluated. If you know of another way, suggest away.

I'm all for trying to salvage the positive, but I know of no other way to do so except to measure claims against the facts, and when I try to do that with Coberst's claims, they often fail. I welcome Coberst to show me examples that don't fail, and if Coberst were truly sincere about his desire to get beyond an "accept/reject" model, he would welcome the opportunity to have people evaluate his claims. But we all know he doesn't mean it for a minute. What he wants is a wholesale ACCEPT, no questions asked.

If your evidence is a sampling of 12, I have good news for you, Coberst. I can think of 13 youngsters with positive attitudes, some of them my own kin. If 12 negative youngsters is a large enough sampling to make generalizations about the population, then surely 13 positive youngsters is enough to trump that and make the opposite diagnosis about the population. Case closed, huh?

Shapeless,

What surprises me in all this is coberst's claim that "higher education" tends to be shunned by Americans of post graduate age. By contrast, in Britain, the Open University plus numerous extra-mural courses at provincial universities appear to be well subscribed. Does coberst's claim make any sense ? He clearly has little recent experience of structured coursework so I am inclined to think he is well out of touch.

Yes--in previous threads I've pointed out to Coberst that his diagnosis of education in the U.S. is quite contrary to the statistics compiled regularly by the National Science Foundation and other educational survey institutions. I'd have thought he'd be heartened to hear that American post-graduate education has not only been moving in precisely the direction he's been calling for, but that it'd been doing so long before he started calling for it to do so. But I guess if you're in the business of selling cures, you have to start by convincing people that they're sick.

i'm not sure about me, but i think shapeless has got a pretty good handle on this thread...

i'd like to hold on to a few of my points though, if possible.

This was priceless--i congratulate you.

I concur !