On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 12:22:31AM -0000, David Nyman wrote: > > On Jun 21, 1:45 pm, Russell Standish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > You assume way too much about my motives here. I have only been trying to > > bash some meaning out of the all too flaccid prose that's being flung > > about at the moment. I will often employ counterexamples simply to > > illustrate points of poor terminology, or sloppy thinking. Its a > > useful exercise, not a personal attack on beliefs. > > Russell, If you believe that a particular thought is poorly expressed > or sloppy, I would appreciate any help you might offer in making it > more precise, rather than 'bashing' it.
It seems you've miscontrued my "bashing", sorry about that. I was, perhaps somewhat colourfully, meaning "extracting some meaning". Since your prose (and often Colin's for that matter) often sounds like gibberish to me, I have to work at it, rather like bashing a lump of metal with a hammer. Sometimes I succeed, but other times I just have to give up. I most certainly didn't mean "unwarranted critising of", or "flaming". I am interested in learning, and I don't immediately assume that you (or anyone else for that matter) have nothing interesting to say. > Sometimes conversations on > the list feel more like talking past one another, and this in general > isn't 'a useful exercise'. My comment to Brent was motivated by a > perception that you'd been countering my 1-personal terminology with 3- > person formalisms. Terminology is terminology, it doesn't have a point of view. Terms should have accepted meaning, unless we agree on a different meaning for the purposes of discussion. > Consequently, as such, they didn't strike me as > equivalent, or as genuine 'counterexamples': this surprised me, in Which counterexamples are you talking about? 1) Biological evolution as a counterexample to Colin's assertion about doing science implies consciousness. This started this thread. 2) Oxygen and hydrogen atoms as counterexamples of a chemical potential that is not an electric field 3) Was there something else? I can't quite recall now. > view of some of the other ideas you've expressed. So I may well have > been too swift to assign certain motives to you, not having detected > any pedagogically-motivated intent to caricature, and I would welcome > your more specific clarification and correction. > > I should say at this point that I too find the 'terminology' task very > trying, as virtual any existing vocabulary comes freighted with pre- > existing implications of the sort you have been exploiting in your > ripostes, but which I didn't intend. I would welcome any superior > alternatives you might suggest. Trying or not, I'm not quite ready to > give up the attempt to clarify these ideas. If you think the exercise > misconceived or poorly executed, it's of course up to you to choose to > 'bash', satirise, or ignore it, but I would particularly welcome open- > ended questions. > I don't recall satirising anything recently. It is true that I usually ignore comments that don't make sense after a couple of minutes of staring at the phrase, unless really prodded like you did in your recent post on attributing sensing to arbitrary interactions. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
