@joefromchicago,
Dear joefromchicago,
In reply to your post of 6/19/10:
Quote:"Look, Jack, I'll make a deal with you: anytime that you see some logical fault in my reasoning, you can let me know, and I'll do the same if I see some logical fault in your argument (like your constant question-begging)."
That sounds a bit different from my having to cope with reasoning that
satisfies you.
You apparently don't realize it but you're putting yourself in a position where you become the mirror-image of a fundamentist church-member whom Gay Liberation ideologues asperse so thoroughly. I mean that a fundamentalist whom you tried to show, factually and rationally, what you consider the injustice of excluding homosexuals from institutionalizing there marriage could pretty much quote you word-for-word, saying, "I appreciate your attempt at imposing some intellectual rigor here, but my thinking is rigorous enough to satisfy myself. I'll let you decide if it satisfies you."
With a problem like that, I believe we're going to have to tighten things up a bit methodologically. The method I suggest that we use in attempting to solve our difference is the same flooring that I suggested to Thomas that we use . I'll bring over here:
1. First, we both admit that we can be mistaken; that we may be involved in an error.
2. The exchange is to be cooperative. We each have the right to pose questions to the other with the expectation that an answer will be forthcoming. And, if the question takes a "yes" or "no" answer, it will be given or an explanation of why it can't be answered with a "yes" or "no" will be given. No evasiveness. I might point out that this avoidance of giving a "yes"/"no" answer and instead getting into detailed obliquities and tangentialities is almost a standard procedure. In fact the avoidance of "yes" or "no" answers, resulting in confusion and inconclusiveness, is probably the chief obstacle to making progress in arriving at a solution to this controversy. .
3. Since there must --and I emphasize must-- be an error in contradictory propositions, we must have test-criteria for identifying it (or them). To get away from subjectivity, and in the interest of simplicity, I suggest that we limit those test-criteria to fallacies and contradictions, nothing more. In other words, neither you nor I will be accused of being involved in an error unless it be a fallacy or a contradiction. And, regarding fallacies, the word is all too frequently used loosely. Fallacies have names. If the accusation of being guilty of using a fallacy is made, a) the name of the fallacy and b) how it is being applied will be given. Otherwise the only test-criterion of error will be contradictions.
4. Errors are to be sought on both sides of the issue. Progress will consist in seeking, identifying, agreeing on and discarding them. They will not be left inconclusive to clog up the exchange
5. There will be no unilateral control of the discussion, something that, sooner or later, Gay Liberation ideologues seek. There will be no trying to dictate what points will or will not be discussed.
6. If there is a disagreement as to how the matter should be approached, we divide the discussion into two, separate approaches gone into concurrently and, using those differing approaches, try to identify errors. There will be no attempt at unilaterally controling approaches for the purpose of prohibiting the use of any approach unless that approach can be shown to involve the one using it in a fallacy or contradiction.
The reason for getting into the above in such detail is that it has been my experience that those points seem to come up inevitably after one has spent quite a bit of time going over the matter. When there is really no agreed-on method for resolving the controversy one then finds that what one is involved in, as mentioned above, is a quarrel rather than a pro/con argument in search of a resolving truth.
Can we agree on the above? Does it need modification?
Regards,
Jack