From: Tedd Hadley <hadley@reliant.yxi.com>
>MikeBGene@aol.com writes
> in message <a0.26a2f64.260bc7fb@aol.com>:
>
> <snip>
> > I'm afraid my interpretation closely and logically follows
> > the written intentions of Dennett. But I bore of this topic.
>
> I can see, generally, that you believe you know Dennett very
> well. Whereas I'm forced to read his writings without a notion
> of what kind of person he is, you apparently know the man right
> down to his rotten core and his intentions are crystal clear.
>
> Well, you could be right, I admit that.
Tedd, it's not quite clear what you mean by this.
Mike *could* be right about Dennett's intentions. All sorts of unlikely
things *could* be true.
However, Mike could *not* be right when he says that Dembski's assertion was
not a misrepresentation. This is a matter of logic, not one of fact. Dembski
quoted a word directly from Dennett, implying that he was representing what
Dennet wrote, not describing Dennett's intentions.
> If he does hate
> religion that much, he probably would agree deep down with
> such an interpretation.
Isn't this almost a tautology? If he hates religion enough to have such
intentions, then he must have such intentions. ;-)
> But I consider it prudent to interpret a person's writings only
> to the extent that the words permit, and we have seen that the
> simplest, most straightforward interpretation only allows us to
> conclude that Dennett's language is careful to avoid the
> interpretation that Dembski accidently (a sloppy reading still
> remains the simplest explanation for his misquote, in my opinion)
> reads into it. A methodology that allows us to extract any
> meaning from text as long as we believe it is consistent with
> the author's intent is fraught with problems, not the least of
> which is a complete disregard for the very probable existence
> of our own preconcieved notions.
Well said. I wish I could have put it so well.
Richard Wein (Tich)
See my web pages for various games at http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~tich/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Mar 23 2000 - 17:55:52 EST