@georgeob1,
georgeob1 wrote:Y'know sometimes Setanta and even Thomas make me look like a calm, even-tempered, utterly reasonable guy. No "snide jackass" here; no cheap shots about attention spans and the like.
That's because your command of the masterful put-down is so feckless I won't even bother contempting or pitying it. Setanta, on the other hand, is a guru in this martial art. Coming from him, "you snide jackass" is profound praise from master to apprentice. I shall forever treasure Setanta's compliment -- his other intellectual limits notwithstanding. Which brings me to his latest post:
Setanta wrote:So it take it you are asserting that you know W and H well enough to comment on whether their initial philosophical positions, which they subsequently renounced, were valid points despite that renunciation?
No. I am asserting that it's irrelevant how much I know about them. If their philosophical positions were valid before the renunciation, they remained valid after it, too. If their philosophical positions were invalid before the renunciation, they remain invalid after it. The renunciation itself is irrelevant.
Setanta wrote:Of course, you could just weasel out by saying they were interesting points, as opposed to valid, and leave it at that (which is to say, meaningless).
Don't knock meaningless interesting things. Mozart's Jupiter Symphony is one of them, and the world would be poorer without it.