David Quinn wrote:I know the question you are raising seems valid to you, but you really do have to go back and re-examine its basis. The question is invalid because it treats the Totality as "the All" and as "less than the All" at the same time. This incoherency springs into being the moment the question is asked, which is what immediately renders it invalid.
You're playing to a theme here, aren't you, David? In the "Why" thread you accused me of treating subjective consciousness as being two things at once, and here you play the same trick.
Justify yourself, punk! As it is, you're just throwing around words. As I said to Diebert, I've phrased my question in very, very concrete terms. This wiffle-waffle that you're responding with frankly doesn't cut it.
David Quinn wrote:Emotionally, the question seems valid to you, which is why you keep pursuing it.
You're not quite a one-trick pony, David, but not far off it either. You have your little arsenal of intended put-downs. In the past few weeks from you I've had "like a woman", "post-modern" and now, "emotional". Of course these are insults only in your own mind, but intentions do count. Emotionally, the question
does seem valid to me, but more to the point,
intellectually it
is valid to me, and you have done NOTHING to challenge that. You are as much of a spin artist as Diebert is.
David Quinn wrote:You need to get it out of your head that Dan, Diebert and I are stubbornly refusing to answer this question of yours out of some sort of fear.
Fear, eh? Is that what it is? Good to know.
I was thinking more along the lines of reluctance: reluctance to recognise the limitations of what you propose as a comprehensive platform but which turns out to not answer all ultimate questions. But if it's fear, then that's very telling. It makes good sense, too. Not knowing everything, not having all of the answers, is, for some people, very frightening: uncertainty horrifies them: adrift in the abyss!
Dan Rowden wrote:I have no interest in your opinion on this. Dave can reverse my decision if he wishes to. Nat stated at his own forum that he's really only posting here to alleviate his boredom. I have no interest in accommodating that sort of impure motive. If you can't tell when people are almost exclusively interested in stirring up drama and make token gestures at serious discussion merely to disguise that agenda, then, well, we see a different world.
Nat has been contributing here for years and years. He was the second guest on The Reasoning Show. He was engaged in a meaningful debate with David, which David acknowledges. Do you honestly think that a sudden banning ("deactivation"), with neither warning nor recourse, is fair given those circumstances? How many people whom you allow to post here have "impure motives"? I can think of several who have absolutely no regard for the intention of the forum, but who instead use it for personal or social purposes, and who don't even discuss its philosophy. Surely a man whose motives are "impure", but who nevertheless engages constructively with the philosophy, is worth a thousand times more than they? And yet you tolerate their presence, and not his. Why? Because they don't
threaten you like Nat does. And, as Pye implies, threats like that must be extinguished when you are
done (in your own mind); otherwise when you admit that you are not done, then they are the force which takes you to a higher level. In another thread from several months back, you asserted to me that Nat essentially agrees with your metaphysics. How much more valuable, then, are any disagreements that he might have with you? Is this a forum of constructive exchange of ideas or is it a place for the empowered yet threatened to extinguish meaningful opposition, so as to maintain the delusion that they are privy to Ultimate Truth, whilst those who oppose are "blocked"?
Now, as for Robert, how you derive "trolling" from his posts is completely beyond me. Granted, Nat indulged in some posts consisting entirely of cutting satire, but Robert did nothing of the sort. It seems to be a case of "guilty by association". Those of us who know you know that you have no high regard for Robert, but does this really justify banning without warning, when, like Nat, and as David likewise acknowledges, he was engaged in constructive debate at the time of said banning? Can you even point to a particular post of Robert's that can even vaguely be characterised as "trolling"?