On 15 February 2014 10:25, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: Yes, I wonder that. I generally assume people arguing on a forum like this > are rational (ish) and hence that they intend what they say and when they > keep avoiding questions it's because they don't want to answer them, and > when they're rude and arrogant it's intentional, and so on. But sometimes I > think they can't be conscious of what they're doing, that surely no one > would want to be like that deliberately, at least no one interersted in > truth and science - maybe money and politics. It's a mystery, to me at > least.
Galen Strawson recently quoted some remarks of Herbert Feigl that, mutatis mutandis, might well apply more generally: "Philosophers are hypersensitive .. in their repressed perplexities. A puzzle which does not resolve itself within a given favored philosophical frame is repressed very much in the manner in which unresolved intrapersonal conflicts are repressed. I surmise that psychologically the first kind may be subsumed under the second. Scholars cathect certain ideas so strongly and their outlook becomes so ego involved that they erect elaborate barricades of defenses, merely to protect their pet ideas from the blows (or the slower corrosive effects) of criticism. No one can be sure that he is not doing this sort of thing in a particular case, and I claim no exception for myself." (The Mental and the Physical). And Sam Harris, in his reply to Dan Dennett in their recent debate on free will, remarks that he's ".. begun to doubt whether any smart person retains the ability to change his mind". Of course one might well wonder how applicable the term "smart" would be if this were indeed the case (leave alone the question of how "free" or otherwise we are to change our minds!). David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
