From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 9:01 AM
To: Paul Filseth
Subject: RE: disingenuous

>     1. You call people's sincerity into question without good cause.
>
>         > I'm not asking this just to be difficult.
>         I have a hard time believing that. :-) 

The guy was asking why a physical law wouldn't make reference 
to the individual human Michaelangelo. He was doing such a 
good job of being difficult that he had to pre-emptively 
deny it, and I jokingly warned him that his denial was not 
completely convincing.

So you have 
   * my infamous "if .. then seems disingenuous" example
     (justified again at length below), and
   * one instance of me jokingly saying that a 
     pre-emptive denial of insincerity was not completely 
     convincing.

This hardly constitutes a practice of "call[ing] people's 
sincerity into question without good cause".

>     2. You argue from authority.

I cite my book a lot, I cite dictionaries a lot, and I make 
assertions about the state of scientific knowledge or the 
broader scholarly consensus.  But I've never said "you have
to believe X because authority Y states X".  On the contrary,
I take pains to say that unquestioning belief in authority
is my definition of 'faith', of which I pride myself in
having none.

>  Your entire line of argument against John, Jeff, Ken and me based
>  on your belief that the pros mostly agree with you is annoying.

This is of course a caricature of that argument. I have explicitly
denied that the "pros" "agree with [me]", and instead have
merely said that my definition is consistent with specific,
cited, quoted "pro" usage.  Citing *usage* in a
lexicographic debate is not argument "from authority".

>       If you're wrong, and they don't agree with you, how are we
>       supposed to prove it? 

By giving any plausible answer (other than mine) to the question 
I asked you on Nov. 12:

  So when you read philosophy journal papers on "the existence 
  of god" like those at
  http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/arguments.html,
  what do you think they are debating?

I.e. Pick any article there that uses 'god' or 'supernatural'
extensively, and show it to be meaningful without these
terms being defined pretty much as I and Webster define them.
This should be even *easier* than answering some philosopher's
full-court defense of a definition, which you repeatedly asked for 
*even after* being told I'm not citing such.  (I later found and
quoted casual attempts at definitions, which you ignored.)

>       John told you he's not impressed by argument from authority and
>       will not debate the thoughts of unnamed "philosophers".  That's
>       my position also. All we're asking for is an opponent we can
>       fight

I've already asked you guys to explain how the use of 'god' and
'supernatural' in SPECIFIC papers and by NAMED philosophers
can be explained in any way other than with definitions pretty
much like Websters' and mine.  None of you guys have even tried.

So it seems that my "argue from authority" habit or practice
boils down to just my repeated request in a definitional
argument that my interlocuters explain some cited
usage...

>  3. You make invalid inferences about what people mean by what they
>    say and challenge them to defend claims they never made.

I indeed challenge people to clearly disagree with me, because
having people agree with me doesn't teach me very much or
test my arguments.  Asking the question "are you claiming X?"
is simply not the same thing as asserting "you are claiming X",
and I'm astonished that someone as smart as you could think
otherwise. Perhaps it would be helpful to you if I changed my
standard challenge to "would you claim X?" or "are you going 
to claim X?".

I simply deny that I have any habit or practice of 
making invalid inferences about, well, anything.

> If you aren't willing to refrain from impugning the truthfulness
> of _everyone_ you don't have solid evidence against

I reserve the right to state that someone appears (or
is likely) not to believe something they say, and I doubt
you would surrender this right yourself.  I simply reject
your apparent premise that I've ever "impugn[ed] the truthfulness"
of anyone just because I "don't have solid evidence against"
her.

> if you weren't assuming faulty
> reasoning in general in my case, then since we'd already been arguing
> incessantly for months, that would seem to imply that you thought either
> that I must be right (so you were just arguing half-heartedly to get me
> to lay it all out for you so you'd understand why I was right), or else
> that my statements really were wrong and yet my reasoning wasn't faulty
> (so I must really know they were wrong and you were right and must
> therefore be being disingenuous).  Yet you claim you never believed I
> was disingenuous.  I don't believe for a second that you thought I was
> right -- your arguments were too passionate.  So it follows that I must
> in fact have been getting your presumption of faulty reasoning all
> along, even if you didn't consciously think of it that way.

I don't understand this paragraph at all; "thought [you] were
right" about what?  What is the antecedent of "my statements"
and "my reasoning"?  In our case, there was
simply no reasoning on display, faulty or otherwise, about
your choice of one example and not another.  I said the choice 
"suprised" me.  You then seemingly denied ("no 'instead'")
even making the choice.  I then said that *if* a situation
obtained -- namely, that you only believe life in Life is 
possible because of Turing-completeness --, *then* in that
situation it would "seem disingenuous" to instead invoke 
Life rather than Turing machines (because you would be 
saying "Life" while thinking about Turing machines). You then 
said the situation does *not* in fact obtain, and that you 
were instead thinking of "a more direct method".

I then disavowed the conditional conclusion of apparent 
disingenuousness, but you for some reason suddenly seemed 
determined to remove  whatever basis I might have for my 
disavowel.  So you said "Whatever." to my disavowel and 
began a months-long filibuster of indignation.  You've 
even refused to discuss whether the above justification 
for a *subjunctive* (i.e. conditional) assertion of the 
*appearance* of disingenuousness is valid.

You seem to claim instead that under no possible 
circumstance is it justifiable to say that a choice or 
statement seems disingenuous.  (If you believed otherwise,
you could not in good conscience ignore my attempted
justification.)  I simply disagree with this principle
that disingenuousness is unspeakable under all possible
circumstances.

> To raise the issue of the other person's sincerity is to imply
> that he does not deserve the benefit of the customary 
> presumption of honest error.

That presumption is not blanket immunity against all possible
charges of disingenuousness.  If you assert that life is 
possible in an alternative universe, and use Life as your 
example (with its traditional menagerie of non-living critters)
ONLY BECAUSE you know Life is Turing-complete, then I
will indeed say it is "surprising" to choose it instead of
Turing machines themselves.  And if you then seem to
deny any such "instead" even applies, I may indeed then
note that such apparent stonewalling makes the choice "seem
disingenuous".

It is of course possible that you could have chosen Life
only for its Turing-completeness and yet, due to some mental
lapse, have simply not even considered the seemingly
obvious alternative example of Turing machines.  This 
possibility seems quite remote for someone who knows about 
Turing-completeness, but your self-report to this effect would
have nevertheless ended the matter months ago. In the
absence of such self-report, the probability of such a
mental lapse can indeed seem lower than the probability
of a calculated effort to get extra mileage out of true
statements about Life, and thus lead to the appearance
of disingenuousness.

> The moment you decided to explore the subject of my
> truthfulness instead of the validity of my argument,
> we were no longer in a friendly debate. [..]  You took
> what had been a discussion and changed it into a 
> prosecution.

On the contrary, *you* took a discussion of your choice
of example and changed it into a prosecution of
me for the (I think justifiable) reasoning I exhibited
about that choice. You could easily have simply stood by
your explanation demonstrating that the conditions for
my conditional claim did not apply.  You could even have 
disputed whether those conditions constitute the appearance
of disingenuousness. Instead, you chose to designate
yourself my "enemy".

> You made us enemies. Enemies stymie each other.

You've certainly been trying hard to do that. I, by
contrast, have not attempted it at all. I hope you aren't
disappointed that the "enemy" relationship is not
necessarily symmetric.

> My goal here is to make sure you never sandbag me again

If by "sandbag" you mean "not completely understand
someone and make counterfactual assertions conditioned 
on a possible and reasonable understanding that is clearly
identified and defended as such", then my advice is to not 
react to counterfactuals as if they are factuals.
If instead you're asking for some kind of James Bond
license to never-be-called-disingenuous-under-any-possible-
circumstance, then you'll have to confine your debating
to people willing to issue such licenses.  (While we're
at it, are there *other* things I'm not allowed to say
about you under any possible circumstance?)

> and I don't see how getting you to understand why "Life" 
> is a good example for refuting anthropic arguments would 
> help achieve [this goal]

If you chose Life only for its Turing-completeness,
and you could make me understand that it is nevertheless
a better example than Turing machines, then I would of course
in the future be more hesitant to trust the sort of judgements
that would otherwise lead me to identify the possible 
appearance of disingenuousness. Unfortunately,
you've given me no reason to distrust my
judgement that no such understanding is at all likely.

If instead you chose Life (as you once said) because
of a "more direct method", then I already have the
relevant understanding, and your focus should rather
be on distinguishing conditional statements from
unconditional statements -- or on figuring out
what someone is referring to when they say "instead".

> > Are you refusing to believe my self-report here?
>
> You didn't self-report what you were going to _think_.

I sure did, in the sentence before the one you here quote:
"I really do now think less of your reasoning skills than 
I did before."

> > How would such refusal be any different than an accusation of
> > disingenuousness?
>
> because your statement was about the future.  You do not 
> necessarily know what you will think in the future.

With "necessarily", you fallaciously exclude the middle case. 
I in fact have a remarkable amount of influence and control
over what I will think (and thus say that I think) in the future.
You admit as much with your repeated requests for promises
about my future debating conduct.

> > Is habitual (but uninentional?) carelessness and illogic toward
> > others' words perhaps one of the practices that allegedly makes me
> > annoying? Please provide details and examples
>
>     > The debate over whether "supernatural" is well-definable.  I can
>     > settle that quite easily by saying, "Yes, it's well-definable when I
>     > define it to mean 'imaginary.'"
>     That of course is not what I meant, and you know it.

In his next posting, JeffMo admitted I was right:
"And I said that you probably didn't mean it."

>     I'm not interested in
>     a definition designed for use in a vain sophomoric attempt to
>     define the supernatural out of existence.

Defining 'supernatural' as "imaginary" is indeed a "vain
sophomoric attempt to define the supernatural out of existence",
and JeffMo did not dispute my characterization.

>     Is Michael Levine, author of the above Stanford Encyclopedia
>     article, someone who "pretends" or "mistakenly claims" to
>     understand the term?

This is simply a question to JeffMo, and is a
careful and logical effort to eliminate his alternatives
and move him toward the realization that the cited usage 
of 'supernatural' is meaningful.

>     If you have evidence that philosophers use the term to mean anything
>     other than its ordinary dictionary definition, then please present it.

This is a straightforward request that is hardly
"careless" or "illogical" with anyone else's "words".
Indeed, you easily managed to satisfy the form of the
request by citing McKinnon. (Unfortunately, you did not
satisfy the substance of the request, since I demonstrated
that McKinnon's position is so untenable that its
refutation is in a philosophy reference work.)

>     > in a world without rocket scientists, we could write "rockets can't
>     > be built" in our textbooks. When rocket scientists appear, we could
>     > then add a footnote saying "except by rocket scientists".
>     Please tell us the ISBN of the physics textbook that says
> building rockets
>     is a violation of what is otherwise a physical law and can only be
>     accomplished by the will of rocket scientists.

This is a simple demonstration that Ken's example does not
address the core issue of whether physical laws refer to
any agent's volition in a world -- ours -- in which "rocket 
scientists" have most definitely "appeared".  It is not 
"careless" or "illogical" with Ken's "words".

> avoid putting words in my
> mouth.  All you need to do is leave out the words "perfect" and
> "considered" when you call something "the Filseth Standard", on the
> grounds that they're your words and not mine.

I didn't quote them as your words, just as most citations of
Occam's Razor don't quote Occam's original Latin.  What I called
the Filseth Standard was a paraphrase of a philosophical point 
about conceptual partitioning and clarity that
is as old as Plato's Chair and that I reasonably but
mistakenly understood you to have made.

> If you offend someone
> to the point that he doesn't want to talk to you, that 
> doesn't license you to assume any answer you like to 
> any question he hasn't answered.

My interpretation wasn't just "any answer [I] like", but
in fact a reasonable interpretation -- as I've explained,
and as you've ignored.

> You don't need to draw my attention to the fact that I've been
> uncivil to you.  I did it deliberately, because you forfeited your
> right to expect civility from me.

You can be uncivil to me all you want, but eliciting incivility 
from me in return is just not within your capabilities. :-)

> Resuming the original
> debate while that implication against me is still hanging would
> imply that I accept you as a civil debate partner.

As I've explained to you perhaps four separate times, 
"that implication" was taken down by me and put back
up by *you*, apparently in a fit of indignation
that I had dared type the d-word.  

Again^2: I never said or believed you were disingenuous,
because I never said or believed that you consciously
affirmed that your original claim relied merely on the 
theoretical possibility of artificial life in a Turing 
Machine. It's long been apparent that when you said

  you think it's acceptable to accuse me of dishonesty 
  for saying something that's true

you were not affirming that it's "true" that your
original claim relied merely on Turing-completeness.
Thus, as I wrote Nov 1, no charge of disingenuousness stands
-- or hangs or remains or lingers or hovers.

On a more general topic, I do indeed think it is easily
possible to be disingenuous -- i.e. cynically and
insincerely calculating, as opposed to your strawman
"dishonest" -- while only making true statements.

> I take it you don't know what "idiolect" means.

I do now; thanks.

> > The fact that I thusly value my time in no way increases the
> > credibility or validity of the case opposed to the settled
> > scholarly consensus.
>
> You can of course use your time as you see fit; but if you take
> that attitude he will have no reason to consider himself refuted.

Making people consider themselves refuted is not my goal.
I'm a meme hunter, and there's no sport in shooting dead 
memes.

> It would not be reasonable for him to
> back off and say to himself, "I must be wrong

I didn't say it would.  However, it would be reasonable
for him to say to himself, "I might be wrong, especially
if only a conspiracy theory can explain why the settled
scholarly consensus disagrees with me."

> the worthlessness of the ordinary dictionary definitions is
> blatant and self-evident

Not if that definition is understood and elaborated as I've
indicated, especially now that I've shown that it harmonizes
with the casual definitions that I've cited in the
philosophical literature.  You have not responded
to my actual excerpts from the literature -- except to
complain that I'm asking you to "swing [your] intellectual
fists against empty air".

> > > You crossed from one to the other without good reason
> >
> > I've given my reasons, and you've admitted that you
> > haven't rebutted them.
>
>      That is false.  I did rebut them, and when you 
> falsely claimed I hadn't, I rebutted that.

I quoted what *I* say is my reason -- that "Life is a
potentially confusing or misleading one to choose"
-- and I quoted you admitting that you haven't rebutted 
said reason.  QED.

> Are you willing to refrain from implying that your fellow 
> AAM denizens deserve to have their sincerity called into 
> question?

I know of nobody on AAM who deserves a priori to have their
sincerity called into question, and I would never imply such.
Also, I know of nobody on AAM who deserves a priori immunity 
from any possible questioning of their sincerity under any 
circumstances.

> Are you willing to refrain from making false statements 
> about them, misrepresenting their positions, and asking 
> them "Have you stopped beating your wife" questions?

("Refrain" implies an prior practice or natural impulse.
Do you realize the resulting irony here, in that YOU have
just asked ME a "have you stopped beating your wife"
question?)

I do not and will never intentionally make false statements
or misrepresent anyone, but I will continue to ask people
questions about their positions.  Some of those questions
may even contain sincere and plausible assumptions seeking
to expose possible disagreement with me, but I am confident 
that most people would just cheerfully identify and disavow 
any assumed position that it turns out they do not hold.
A tiny minority will no doubt greet each such question
with the demonstrably false refrain that "do you claim X?"
constitutes the incorrect inference "you claim X".

> Are you willing to refrain from arguing from authority 
> without making what the authority says available for 
> rebuttal attempts.

I haven't done that, and of course wouldn't do it. I will
however continue to mention "scientists",
"philosophers", "physicists", "biologists" etc. in
reference to the relevant current scholarly consensus,
and will of course elaborate on or point to that consensus
when asked.

> If the answer to any of those is "no", quit following 
> me around and pestering me.

I fear this purported description of my behavior says
more about you than it does about me.