John, JS: [[ I took 2 examples from each of 3 participants. But those sentences would be insulting in any context. ]] GF: Are you seriously claiming this as a FACT? And not an insult to those 3 participants, or a wholly arbitrary designation on your part, calling a sign by that name even when nobody is actually insulted by it?
Your testimony regarding the effect of the rule to avoid "you" is no more or less reliable than anyone else's testimony based on one's memory of past list behavior. My experience of the list behavior of the past few days, which is directly observable NOW on my screen, points in a different direction. I would invite any interested list member to take a look and decide for himself or herself — though I'm certainly not claiming that it would be worthwhile to do so (or to argue this point any further). Gary f. -----Original Message----- From: John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> Sent: 2-Aug-18 19:19 To: Peirce-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Recommendation: In email notes, avoid the word 'you' Gary, I made a recommendation based on what another colleague suggested on another list. And that recommendation really helped improve the level of discourse. I have since suggested the idea on other occasions, and it helped there as well. > ET > John - thank you - very good advice. > GF > It seems that little word is not so easy to avoid! 😊 Yes. I had thought of making an exception for sincere compliments. But I wanted to keep my note short. > If I say “This is nonsense!”, is that /not/ an insult because I didn’t > use the word “you”? To say that a sentence is nonsensical may be a fact. To say so is much less insulting than to say "You are confused", which makes two claims (1) about some sentence, and (2) about the person who said it. Point #1 may be appropriate, but point #2 is a gratuitous insult. And yes, I did take the examples out of context: I took 2 examples from each of 3 participants. But those sentences would be insulting in any context. I also mentioned Mike B. and Gary R., who made good comments without insulting anybody. I also received an offline note with the following comment: > Academics must have "thicker skins," in my experience; but your point > is worth considering, I also subscribe to academic lists for linguists and computer scientists. And none of the sentences I quoted would occur on those lists. I believe that philosophers should raise their civility to the level of academic discourse in other fields. John ---------------- Subject: RE:[PEIRCE-L] Recommendation: In email notes, avoid the word 'you' Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2018 16:32:23 -0400 From: g...@gnusystems.ca To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu John, You have taken your example quotes out of context. Now, is the above sentence a “gratuitous insult” because it has the word “you” in it? And would it be less insulting if I had written “The examples selected for this argument are taken out of context”, pretending that I didn’t know who wrote it? >The phrase "you are confusing..." is always an insult. If I say “This is nonsense!”, is that /not/ an insult because I didn’t use the word “you”? I think this argument (I will not say “your” argument) ignores the basic semiotic principle that *there is no context-free meaning of any word*. The argument also fails to show any correlation between the presence or absence of “you” in a post and the presence or absence of heatedness in the responses to those posts. Case in point: If you don’t mind my saying so, you wrote: [[ EX 2 > I’m glad to see that you now acknowledge the reality of truth. This is a gratuitous insult. Various subscribers to Peirce-L may quibble about the criteria in different circumstances, but I'm sure that all of them distinguish T and F. ]] Looking at the context of that statement, namely the post it replied to (which was included in it), we see that the person who wrote it, and to whom the reply was explicitly addressed, had in fact explicitly acknowledged the reality of truth in the opening sentences of that post. How is it an insult to express gladness with that acknowledgement? If I had written “You *deny* the reality of truth” — or some circumlocution devised to avoid using the word “you” — *that* would be a gratuitous insult. Was it a gratuitous insult when I wrote to Jon A.S. today that I thought his recent post was an improvement over an something he’d said earlier? And if so, was my message insulting simply because I addressed him directly as “you”? You may take offense at my criticism of your argument, and respond heatedly to it, but I can’t honestly say that it’s my fault if you do so, and certainly not if you take offense because I addressed you directly in it. I am not in the least offended by your accusing me (albeit surreptitiously) of a “gratuitous insult”; I am simply arguing against the validity of a context-free rule of netiquette, and trying to explain why I think “Do not take offense” is a more practical rule. Gary f.
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