One of the ways in which Derek manifests -- either willfully or somewhat sub-consciously -- his determination to evade grappling with certain direct questions is to pick one element in a multi-part argument, say, "This is absurd," and ignore everything else said.
For example, a while back, I was arguing that "art"/"artness" was a mythical ontic category/quality. To convey what I had in mind with the phrase "mythical ontic category/quality" I cited people's notions of miracles, destiny, luck, holiness, genius, and more. I pointed out how people sincerely entertain those notions, and when they use those words they sincerely believe they "refer to", "denote", "name", a non-mental entity, a "real thing" out there, the way they believe that 'the Plymouth Rock' and 'the Eiffel Tower' are names of real non-mental things. One of the "categories" that I included for comparison to "art" was "sin". I wrote: " 'That action is a sin.' Those who say this are (often) not simply conveying disapproval. They truly believe there is an ontic category of "sinful acts'. Combined with other mind-independent entities they believe in - like soul, heaven, and hell - whether or not a given act IS a 'sin' is of great import. "If they're being honest, people who think this way concede, yes, certain works ARE b artb , and the rest are not, and that's the ontic fact-of-the-matter." It was a long, detailed argument. But Derek seized solely on "sin", and said any comparison of art to sin is too ridiculous to respond to. Having said that, he ignored the rest of the argument. Chris adopts effectively the identical tactic in his latest. I argued that "In all walks of life we are justified in rejecting entire genres without exposing ourselves to every possible instance of them." As examples of genres that I claimed we could reasonably dismiss from our lives if we find they consistently occasion boredom or misery, I gave jazz, German lieder, dog shows, golf matches, flower shows, wrestling matches, Kabuki, and opera. Alas, I also mentioned that my wife will not watch prize fights; she hates the genre. >From my entire list of examples, Chris picks solely one: prize fights. He writes: "I would assert that such a claim is the result of too many blows to the head." And he skips entirely the rest of the argument. I have remarked about Chris -- not by way of irrelevant ad hominem but in an attempt to understand why I've felt his contributions are so consistently unsatisfying -- that he seems to suffer very quick mental fatigue. Often his attention can't manage scope -- thus he can miss the impact of all examples except that one that excites his trinkety interest -- or his attention seems to quit on him halfway through someone else's sentence. He acquits Sutherland's wanting to know Derek's experience with jazz, but doesn't seem to take on board the very next paragraph in my posting: "Sure, if someone, say, dismisses all of opera after hearing just one work, we disapprove. But in fact Derek conveys he has been exposed to a great deal of jazz in his lifetime. "My judgements were not based on this group alone. Who has not heard huge dollops of jazz one way or another at various points in their life? On the radio, on film, on the telly. One would need to live in a cave to avoid it. Only the music can do the persuasion. Jazz has persuaded me - not to like it." Derek and Chris share some taits that handicap them in philosophy, but I perceive this important difference: Derek is earnest, serious about the subjects; Chris seems to like objecting to stuff just for the hell of it. His fun from the forum is the teasing, the sniping, being a minor hellion. Kirby, for all his irrelevance, his glee from causing havoc, and his announced aims of testing the borders of tolerance, could get it together to lead us through POETICS. ************** Need a new ride? Check out the largest site for U.S. used car listings at AOL Autos. (http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851)
