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From: tsf@THEORY.CS.CMU.EDU (Timothy Freeman)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism
Subject: Re: tell us please
Message-ID: <1383@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 11 Apr 88 20:22:14 GMT
References: <5540@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <5650@well.UUCP>
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In article <5650@well.UUCP> pan@well.UUCP (Philip Nicholls) writes:
>In article <5540@spool.cs.wisc.edu> gautier@ai.cs.wisc.edu (Jorge Gautier) writes:
>>
>>Hey, professor, are you still around?
>>Since you know so much about philosophy and ethics, why don't you tell
>>us about the RIGHT philosophical system?  And don't forget to include
>>the social, economic and political systems to go along with it.
>
>This question, meant as a taunt, only serves to illustrate the shallowpated
>nature of libertarian social thought.  You must be getting desperate.  I
>will not bother to answer for the professor, but suggest you read the
>quote in my signature, and THINK about it.
>
>"To ask a question, you must first know most of the answer."

Above is another argument of the form "You disagree with me.
Therefore you are shallow and getting desperate.  Therefore you are
wrong."  The Professor made several statements like that to me over
the mail too.  Maybe there are rhetoric classes where they teach such
things.  Unfortunately, if I claim that such arguments are totally
useless, then I would be shallow and desperate, and therefore wrong.
So I won't respond (except for the fact that this is a response... Hm,
maybe I *can* make merit-free arguments as tangled as Philip's...
Nah, I'm too shallow, must have been something I ate.  Never mind.).

Actually, the Professor claimed in mail he sent to me that he didn't
have any usable alternative to the philosophies he was criticizing.  I
don't believe he could tolerate having no consistent philosophy of
life, so my guess right now is that he was trying to convert us all to
Catholicism.  My guess may be wrong, but it is plausible and
entertaining, so I'll stick with it until something better comes along.

The presupposition that selfishness is bad seems to underlie many of
the Professor's gripes.  I have asked him to justify this, and I have
made posts asking some altruistic person to enlighten me, and I have
received no response.  If a person won't attempt to defend his axioms,
I tend to doubt the merits of his conclusions.  (Well, actually the
Professor did respond, saying that "The Virtue of Selfishness" by Ayn
Rand had no merit.  This is not relevant, because the question was
about a piece of behavior, not about a book.)

As far as the quote goes, Jorge Gautier did indeed manage to ask a
question, so the quote implies he knows most of the answer.  The quote
doesn't imply that he knows all of it, so even if the quote is true,
there is some use for getting real answers from the Professor or
Philip Nichols.  I will not bother to answer Phillip Nichols, but
suggest he read the quote in my signature, and THINK about it.

--
"To use clever rhetoric to evade questions is not evidence of knowing
the answers."                    - Tim Freeman
-- 
Tim Freeman

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