[buddha-l] it's not about belief

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 14:07 -0500, curt wrote:

> Feigning ignorance is a common form of disingenuousness - but does not 
> define it. Any argument that is "lacking in candor" - like intentionally 
> misrepresenting your opponent's positions - is disingenuous.

So that raises the interesting question of why you characterize your
dialogue partners as disingenuous, which suggests that they are
deliberately and calculatingly misrepresenting you. Would it not be more
charitable to characterize your dialogue partners as misunderstanding
you or simply being mistaken in their interpretation of your words? 

There is a subtle distinction between saying something inaccurate and
lying.  It is, for example, rather easy to show by now that President
Bush was mistaken when he said there were weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq. It would take considerably more effort to show that he was lying
or being disingenuous about this particular point. (It might, however,
be easier to show that he does have a tendency, perhaps even an alarming
tendency, toward disingenuousness.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico