>What I'm saying is that while you have kept yourself occupied dissecting
>other people's arguments you may have neglected to notice that there is an
>apparent coherence to those arguments for the other person and that
>perhaps the same thing is happening to you -- parts of your argument are
>strong and parts are weak and you mix them all up together and hope the
>strong parts prevail and take the weak parts with them in the bargain. But
>then when somebody dissects your argument they go after the weak parts and
>perhaps you are thinking, "that's not what I meant." Meanwhile, when you
>dissect their argument they are thinking "that's not what I meant." So
>beneath it all there is an unacknowledged agreement between the two of you
>that you were being misunderstood. <...>
I don't think there's a person on this list who isn't aware of this happening. Maybe it's time for a snit poll to see how self-reflective we are.
Kelley