[Buddha-l] Bertrand Russell

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Richard Hayes schreef:

>On Saturday 12 August 2006 01:40, Barnaby Thieme wrote:
>
>  
>
>>re: Russel, his "History of Western Philosophy" is amusing, but
>>notoriously unreliable. The philosophers he does not like are
>>depicted in grotesque charicature.
>>    
>>
>
>There is, of course, a very long tradition in both Europe and Asia 
>of refuting gross caricature's of one's opponents. (It's so much 
>more fun than being intellectually honest) 
>  
>
So you support all those hate preachers (christian, hindu or muslim) 
because they're fun and not dull? Do you really think that it's fun to 
watch a dialogue in which opponent arguments of are misrepresented all 
the time. I personally find this very boring and 'human all to human'. 
That's why I don't bother to read Russell and prefer to read Coppleston.

>Take unfair caricature out of a philosopher's tool kit, and the 
>philosopher becomes a reliable but dull pedant (except that most 
>philosophers are such pee-poor scholars that they don't even 
>qualify as pedants).
>
>  
>
I find your arguments very poor indeed. First of all your standard seems 
to be pure amusement, which is not the standard raison d'être for 
discussions. Secondly the structure of your argument is that 
misprepresenting arguments is not bad because people do it all the time, 
which is nonsense of course (a.o. because of confusion between 'is' and  
'ought'). Thirdly you would have to misrepresent the arguments of your 
opponents as well, which means no dialogue but factual solepsism.
Do you really think you're so funny? :-)

-- 
Erik


www.xs4all.nl/~jehms
weblog http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/pub/blogs/blog.php?uid=2950