Hello Mike.
>>There was very little in your last message that addressed the issue of
>>whether Dembski misrepresented Dennett.
>
>Lookie here. Rich makes a claim without qualifying it as his
>opinion or interpretation (something he complained about with
>Dembski). I can easily read what I wrote in my message and
>argue you just misrepresented me. For I think there
>was much in my last message that did indeed address this issue.
I'll leave it to others -- if anyone's interested -- to read your message
and see how much of it actually addressed the issue.
Re-reading the message, I see there was actually one paragraph that
addressed the issue. I may have been too quick to dismiss it. Because you'd
snipped and ignored the detailed argument that I presented in my previous
message (20 March 2000 16:36), I didn't feel inclined to address your
message point by point, and so maybe didn't read it carefully enough.
Anyway, I will now address the argument of that paragraph.
>"Okay, so I use Websters to look up the word "quarantine."
>One definition is as follows: "to isolate from normal relations
>or communication." Hmmm. Normal relations and
>communication among parents and children are to propagate
>those memes [traditions]. That's an intimate part of the parent-
>child relationship. And Dennett's plans of re-education
>are indeed ways to isolate the parents and their memes from
>their children. Thus, it is indeed quarantine Dennett is talking
>about when advocates re-education "as early as possible." A way
>to cage a religion, a way to quarantine a religion, is to ban it to
>the realm of the purely private and intervene on a parent's
>education of their children."
Let's have another look at what Dembski wrote:
>Daniel Dennett even recommends
>"quarantining" parents who teach their children to doubt Darwinism
>(see the end of his *Darwin's Dangerous Idea*).
You're overlooking the fact that Dembski is *quoting* the word
"quarantining". So we are entitled to assume that he's using it with the
same meaning as Dennett. Otherwise, Dembski is quoting out of context.
However, Dennett's only use of the word was in reference to "those whose
visions dictate that they cannot peacefully coexist with the rest of us".
The idea that these are the same people as the parents who are referred to
in the next paragraph is just one possible interpretation. Even if it's a
reasonable interpretation, we're back with the issue of whether it's
acceptable to pass off one possible interpretation as something that someone
actually said.
And even if, for the sake of argument, we ignore the fact that Dembski puts
the word "quarantining" in quotes, so we can allow Dembski to use the word
in the way you suggest, that's still only one possible interpretation of the
word, and a highly dubious one at that. You're asking us to accept that
"quarantine parents" can mean "describe [their] teachings as the spreading
of falsehoods" or "demonstrate this to [their] children at the earliest
opportunity" (Dennett's words).
You also wrote:
>For starters, I noted that you have failed to establish that Dembski
>misrepresented Dennett. It is clear that this is your *belief,* but
>I think you have provided very little to support this belief. In fact,
>you don't seem to want to address your interpretation head on.
In my message before last (20 March 2000 16:36), I gave a careful analysis
of why Dembski's assertion was not justified. My main point was: "One cannot
draw the conclusion that Dembski does solely from the source cited, without
additional premises." You snipped and ignored my argument, choosing only to
respond to my final paragraph.
You also wrote:
>Easy. Your interpretation is a non-sequitar. Dembski's is not (see
above).
The first part is correct. My interpretation is a non sequitur (it was
deliberately chosen to be one, so as to make my point). The second part is
false. Dembski's interpretation is a non sequitur too.
To show that Dembski's interpretation is not a non sequitur you must
demonstrate how it follows from premises within Dennett's text. (According
to my dictionary, a non sequitur is "a conclusion that does not follow from
the premises".) I presume your "(see above)" refers to the paragraph that I
addressed earlier in this message. But that paragraph only shows, that
Dembski's words are one possible interpretation. Since there are other
possible interpretations which are mutually exclusive with this one, you
cannot say that Dembski's one follows from the premises.
Richard Wein (Tich)
See my web pages for various games at http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~tich/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Mar 21 2000 - 21:26:43 EST