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Originally posted by filtherton
I stand by my usage of the word "general". I take it to mean
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionar...ral&x=17&y=16: GENERIC
5 a : applicable to or characteristic of the majority of individuals involved. The "individuals" here being philosophical discussions. It still doesn't sound ridiculous to me.
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*nod*, a matter of opinion. Semantics. An easily misunderstood statement you made.
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One objection to my post:
Try reading yourself before you proclaim bold truths about the motivations of others.
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My original comment:
I read it, and I read you, already. Your debating bludgeon looked like the act of someone who cared more about winning a debate than truth.
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I said your debating bludgeon, or weapon, or tool, looked similar to the act of someone with particular negative motivations.
And this is a true statement. Much like "in general, philosophical debate is dumb". True for some definition of the words used, but not very clear in the meaning, and has a significant negative feel to it.
I mean, "in general, _fill_in_your_occupation_ is full of ignorant people". Almost everyone is ignorant, relative to other people.
"You are ignorant".
Another such statement. Full of insulting sounding words, but under some specific literal meaning a nearly tautologically true statement.
Nobody knows everything, thus everyone is ignorant. If I throw it out in the middle of a random debate, it doesn't sound like a null-statement: people assume when you say something that you are saying something.
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I try to respond with tone matching that of my fellow debaters.
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I never ascribed you those motivations. In fact, in my entire post, I can only see one time that I actually ascribed a feature to you:
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I claim you have attribution error: you are attributing the crappyness of philosphical debate to the nature of philosophical debate. I am attributing it to your failings.
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Every other statement was "like X" or "possibly X". Using your own standards for the use of language and the term "general", they really assert nothing about you.
That last sentace was, however, over the top. I apologize for it. The rest stand, as far as I can tell, because they are all qualified sufficiently to mean, under very specific definitions of the words used, basically nothing.
"90% of everything is crud" is a very useful statement. If all you meant by statement about philosophy in general was that 90% of everything is crud, then can you at least understand how people would take offence, misinterpriting your statement to mean something about Philosophy in specific instead of things in general?