Re: Intelligence and Statistics

From: David Longley (David_at_longley.demon.co.uk)
Date: 09/26/04 

Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 14:27:26 +0100

In article <4156b154$0$44096$5fc3050@dreader2.news.tiscali.nl>, JPL
Verhey <matterDELminds@hotmail.com> writes
>
>"David Longley" <David@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:kADC$jEfSpVBFwCi@longley.demon.co.uk...
>> In article <41560f1e$0$44069$5fc3050@dreader2.news.tiscali.nl>, JPL
>> Verhey <matterDELminds@hotmail.com> writes
>> <DL>
>>>> What you need to grasp is that it certainly isn't mental. Sadly,
>>>> after
>>>> all this time, you simply don't understand why. That tells everyone
>>>> something about your "intelligence", and that, really, is pretty
>>>> much
>>>> all that I'm really interested in illustrating.
>>>
>>>Again only making statements. No arguments. No discussion.
>>>
>>>Bravo DL for your contributions.
>>>
>>>
>> Plus ca change....
>>
>> What you want is indeed *argument* and that's precisely what many
>> neurotics here want.
>
>Right.. I meant "argumentation", explanation etc.. Forgive me, as you
>know Dutch is my mother tongue and mistakes slip in. So you can stop
>your own abusive language now and try to behave.
>
>I offer you a serious, non-abusive normal discussion of Quine - take it
>or leave it.
>
>
OK, let's see how serious. What you said had nothing to do with
international language problems, your English seems as good as anyone
else's here. The fact is that Zick, Cutman and Michaels etc make much
the same "mistake" that you do. What I have had to say about the poverty
of "argument" is very much why I keep pointing people to "Two Dogmas",
in that context, to the first sections on analyticity.

I think you should make the effort to read what I write *not* as "abuse"
but as my efforts to be "critical". There's an important difference.

By all means discuss Quine, but I suggest you do it with Zick, Cutman,
Michaels etc. A discussion between you, using the text as a referent and
drawing on other material on the net would probably prove far more
useful and productive to all. I suspect that if you tried to "discuss"
it with me, at least at the moment, you'd probably read what I said as
abusing or undermining your efforts.

What I've done is draw on Quine, Skinner, Meehl (and many others) to
make some points which I don't think they individually ever made, or if
they did, they didn't make explicitly - possibly because they saw no
need. Perhaps the most useful clue there is the first quote from Quine
with which I open "Fragments". The reason why I've made reference to him
and others is not to cite them as intellectual authorities (although I
could certainly do worse), but to provide others here with some of the
context which I think is required to critically evaluate what I have to
say. 

-- 
David Longley
Loading