snitsnat wrote:
>
> Do you think ignoring what I wrote is a sign of respect? What I wrote was
> not a claim that biology plays no role. But you chose do pretend that I
> said otherwise. That's not respecting what I wrote Justin. It's building a
> strawman, just as you did with Miles.
I agree that one or more of Justin's posts on this set of threads has strayed into building a strawman (metaphysical opponents on the left of all biology as being reductionist biology, or something like this). I _don't_ think it was necessary for you to take his third-person reference to you personally.
Third-hand references _can_ be intended as signs of disrespect. But I think you should see them that way _only_ if someone quotes you from someone else's reply, thus ostentatiously talking "over your head" even while responding to you direct words. We have to give people _some_ elbow room to be insulting as a sideeffect or unintended consequence of some other goal.
Carrol
On strawman arguments, I posted as follows to Justin. I don't believe he's responded to this post.
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andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> Veneer? Bullshit. It's just that 3/4 of the left can't
> hear the word biology mentioned in the same context as
> behaviort without thinking that that it's some sort of
> reactionary justification for the worst aspects of the
> existing order. They just stop thinking and repeat
> Gould and Lewontin's good arguments against other
> targets in contexts where they don't belong. I am
> sorry to see Miles put himself in the "stop thinking"
> group.
I think you are talking about people who only exist in your imagination. At any rate, I would like to see a few instances of such leftists cited, and some reason to believe that the 3/4 figure is even a minimally good mathematical metaphor, much less anything approaching empirical accuracy.
Carrol
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I add at this time: I would like to see even one instance of someone who repeats Gould in an inappropriate context. I myself do not pretend to think for myself in biology; I'm not trained in biology, and as far as I know the _only_ person on this list who has much training in biology is Miles.