(urth) Pike's ghost

[António Marques]

(You are welcome to reply with a passionate denial of the assessment I 
give below of your position and a questioning of the assertions I've 
made, but as to the first, I doubt there is anything wrong about it, and 
as to the latter this isn't Philosophy and Epistemology 101, so I'll let 
you have the Last Word if you so wish - if I intended to discuss such 
matters it wouldn't be here; here their only purpose is to help 
understand what is each other's view, which I think has already been done.)

James Wynn wrote:
> António Marques wrote:
>> James Wynn wrote:
>>> António Marques wrote:
>>>> If you think the archives are full of theories challenged
>>>> because they have simpler alternatives, I think perhaps you
>>>> might reread them.
>>>
>>> James Wynn wrote: That is in no way how I have described the
>>> challenges.
>>
>> Antonio wrote No? You couched it in rather judgemental terms.
>
> I'm not sure how that would matter in regards to whether or not I
> said that theories are challenged because there are simpler
> alternatives. The point is, I didn't say it. But, people who cannot
> disabuse themselves of the idea that their own interpretations are
> *objectively* the most reasonable, simpler, and obvious, and are
> therefore the DEFAULT theory...these people make that claim all the
> time.

Reasonable, simpler and obvious are 3 separate things. And 3 objective
things. You seem stuck on a stage where 'reasonable', 'simpler' and
'obvious' (and 'objective') (and 'default') are Desired Qualities That 
Prove Superiority, and you seem to have developed an intense aversion to 
their use, which you think you can disavow by claiming that it's all
subjective. Well, it's not. Those words have meanings, those meanings
are precise enough. According to domain, they can also be qualified.
Thus, they do not exist in a 'pure' form. That, however, does not mean
they're meaningless catchwords as you'd like to believe and you like to
assert. But each time you assert it ('one's own ideas are always
[whatever]'), it's not those concepts that go away or lose weight, it's
your position that goes a bit further down the slippery slope.

Yes, there are defaults. Sometimes there aren't defaults because the
candidate to being default is defective. Being a 'default' is nothing
special. The idea that the 'default' has precedence, if not unique
authority, is nothing more than a positivst idea, and positivism was a
19th century pop-atheist fad. The idea that 'there must be a scientific
explanation' and that once a scientific explanation is devised it must
absolutely be 'the' correct one is but an extension of that. I won't
even be the last one to stand by that attitude, I won't stand by it at
all, but that doesn't mean that there aren't defaults.

I don't know what it was that brought you such a personal antipathy to
those concepts. Possibly you've been confronted with them in the past,
possibly even unjustly, and the way you found to get around it was to
relativise them. Well, all is not relative. All is relative, but not to
the same degree. Those last two statements are equivalent. This is not
psychoanalysis, it's clarification of stance. (Form can be deceiving.)

I think I now have a perfect understanding of your position, so you
don't have to explain it further. That still doesn't allow me to predict
which behaviour you will consider 'smug', because, if I take your
criteria, a given behaviour is smug if it involves a given type of
interpretation, but on the other hand one cannot distinguish between
types of interpretations because you adamantly deny that the traits that
define the type in question actually exist. I won't pull a James and say
that smug behaviour is that which is contrary to James, because I don't
think you view it that way, but it may well be be an accurate predictor
(now's the time to point out that there are many who have been able to
disagree with you in a non-smug way?). Either way, I hope I've
understood enough of it so I can avoid incurring in such a fault. Time
will tell. Well, you will tell.

I'm not quite sure I've made my own position entirely clear, nor am I
sure it is of enough interest to anyone. If anyone wishes clarification
on some given point, feel free to ask.

[There's really nothing below this point that hasn't been said above.]

>>> However, you have _perfectly_ described the way that an
>>> unenlightened** challenger (such as I have been describing) sees
>>>  his own challenges. HIS alternative is "simpler". Of one's own
>>> alternatives are /always/ simpler: Either it does not require a
>>> recognition of irony in the text or it does not leave
>>> problematic questions hanging or something else.
>>
>> If it does not require a recognition of irony in the text or it
>> does not leave problematic questions hanging or something else,
>> then it's simpler because it does not require a recognition of
>> irony in the text or it does not leave problematic questions
>> hanging or something else, not because it's one's own.
>
> ????? <eyes squinting, head tilted with a look of befuddlement> And a
> Rube Goldberg contraption is simpler because it only consists of
> unmachined parts. (coo-coo)

No, it's not (simpler than what?). That you're left to befuddledly argue
that is illustrative.

> My actual POINT was that when an alternative is your own, the
> remaining complexities are insignificant to you, the simplifications
>  a a great major improvement. It is your child. The defects have
> charm. Your point is what? Just to have the last word?

No, I didn't even have a point here. I was trying to understand yours.
You have kindly provided it. You had before, but then the rest of your
arguments seemed to point otherwise. Your point in untenable.

>>> **"Unenlightened" is a term you, Antonio, originally coined. I'm
>>> merely adopting it so we can use the same terms.
>>
>> Coined it I may have, but I can't find the reference and I would
>> like to in order to understand what made it so memorable. Can you
>> provide it? (If not actually, from memory?)
>
> I _believe_ it developed at earliest with a statement from you along
>  the lines of "what makes you so much more enlightened?" Your point
> at the time seemed to be that describing the terms "arrogant" and
> "smug" is in and of itself arrogant and smug. Which I then explained
> was an absurd presumption (...)

I see. Well, I think there is a difference between asking someone why do
they think they're more enlightened than others, and coining a term
'unenlightened'. But that is beside the point. You misunderstood my
remark. All I asked was why did you think you alone had the ability to
use such concepts as objectivity (something you feel free to use to
condemn others, and free to deny it exists when it doesn't suit your
argument) or you alone had the ability to view the inherent subjectivity 
in every observation. I don't think that's arrogant on your part, since 
it appears unintentional.