Re: Torkel Franzén is dead

George Dance wrote:
MoeBlee wrote:
Again, you have not shown any reasonable grounds to infer that Franzen
disqualified posters on the basis of a lack of a PhD. "A matter of
record according to some correspondents" is NOT a matter of record.

What everyone has said about Torkel is part of the record. That
doesn't mean one should believe what everyone says; that would be
absurd. But when Timothy Murphy, eg, calls Torkel's arguments cogent
and thought-provoking, that is evidence that Torkel made cogent and
thought-provoking arguments in some of his posts.

As I said, you haven't given any reasonable grounds to infer that
Franzen handled posters on the basis of a lack of PhD, or whatever it
is that (with precise paraphrase - see later in this post) you're
claiming.

It just means that my evidence is purely anecdotal; I haven't tried to
count or class the posts in this thread.

What particular anecdotal incidents do you refer to?

I have to reject that explanation, because the evidence I've seen
indicates that he responded to posters in the same way each time, no
matter what they wrote. He never flamed a math PhD for making a typo,
for example; he would shrug it off as a typo.

Did he attack someone for making a typo? It's possible. But it would be
better if you gave an example and also gave grounds for thinking that
the attack was not just motivated by what else the poster wrote as
opposed to calculating that the poster does not have a PhD.

No, deciding on race is not simpler than just reading posts and
respondeding on the basis of what is in the posts. I would give ANY
poster the default (innocenct until shown not to be) that what they
respond to is what is in the posts they read much more so than to what
might be the race of the poster, UNLESS I had reason to think
otherwise.

The above is my reason for thinking otherwise; and I think the evidence
will show it.

What above is a reason? What evidence?

Let's stay clear on what I actually suggested; that having a math PhD
was sufficient to avoid being flamed by Torkel.

You haven't shown that the poster having a PhD is IN ITSELF what
Franzen used as the basis of his decision.

I didn't suggest, and
don't think, that having a math PhD was necessary; and I see it as
obviously false that a non-math PhD was either necessary or sufficient.

Math PhD, non-math PhD, necessary, sufficient, whatever. You've not
shown that Franzen used any such consideration.

For example, Franzen had total contempt for philosophers who wrote in
symbolic logic (which includes a good number of philosophy PhD's),
considering them to have produced little more than "mumbo jumbo."

Please show a specific quote by Franzen saying that.

One
couldn't fget him to say when he was alive, as he didn't say, and one
certainly get him to say now.

That insinuates essentially a "guilty unless denied" argument. Franzen
didn't have to say a damn thing about the subject.

Not unless he raised it himself. Which is relevant to the evidence
below.

Then please quote Franzen raising the issue of PhDs.

I don't know which particular remark of mine you have in mind and the
context of it. I said that Franzen made plenty of helpful posts. I
don't recall saying that people's negative assessments of him are due
to their not having read those posts (though, of course, I can't rule
out that they may not have read those posts).


You're misunderstanding me. You responded to galatea in the way Zink
responded to someone: by saying that you hadn't read the posts he was
talking about.

I don't recall exactly what I posted to galathaea, but my main point
was that I did not know specifically what posts galathaea has in mind.
And I don't know what you think that has to do with my original
challenge: You made some claim about Franzen and how he posted to
people based (necessary, sufficient, math, non-math, I don't know, I'll
let you state precisely what you mean) on PhD; but you've not cited
even a single example.

It's likely that I will have to say the same thing when
you introduce specific posts.

Say what same thing? I asked you to cite specific posts in which the
poster having a PhD was a factor (in whatever sense you are claiming it
was a factor) with Franzen. What would that have to do with my adducing
certain posts in his favor if I were to do that?

I've read quite a bit by now. Unless you at least point to a specific
thread and posts, I can only take your remarks as merely your own
expression of your own evaluation without consideration to make your
evaluation subject to the merest objective context of specific threads
and posts. You don't have to substantiate your claim, fine. But if you
won't at least point to a specific thread, then I have no reason to
give any credit to your claim.
MoeBlee

All right; that's a good place to begin by introducing evidence. So
I'd like to introduce the following link, which I'll label Exhibit B
(Exhibit A was the quote from his exchange with xyz):

http://tinyurl.com/lmyxl

Read it and make your own judgement. I would make two claims about
that thread: :

1) In it, Torkel advances his thesis that there are some people who are
incapable of understanding symbolic logic; and that for them to try use
it would only muddle their thinking. (For convenience, I will call
those "Submathematical" humans, or SMs.)

I answered that in a post previous to this one. You egregiously
misparaphrased Franzen and you've added provocative rubric of your own.

2) Torkel does so only as a troll: to distract attention from the topic
under discussion(which he ignores completely) and try to provoke a
flame war by calling someone an SM.

You only CLAIM that. The thread you cite shows quite differently.
Franzen's view on this subject is not one that I am even sympathetic
with. I like symbolic logic and wish it were taught more. I don't have
any kind of studies to show that symbolic logic helps people in
informal thinking, but it has helped me, so I hope that it will help
other people. On the other hand, I see Franzen's point, and at least to
the limited (quite limited, I feel) extent that he's supported his
point, it does add an interesting and helpful qualification. He may
very well be correct (though, I'm rooting for him not to correct) that
many people who otherwise reason quite well informally only get mixed
up by the formalisms so that the formalisms don't contribute to such
people's informal reasoning. So he was very much right on topic in that
thread. You're miffed because he used your own previous confusions in
formal logic as anecdotal for his position. His doing that was surely a
barb against you, but it still was an apropos illustration of his point
and his point still was very much on the topic of that thread.

So when you say he "ignores completely" the topic of the thread, you're
as good as lying. Moreover, enough of his posts in that thread are
informative enough to add to the chunk of those that are not just
stirring and perpetuating flames so that these are evidence toward the
verdict, even in just this one "Exhibit", that it is not the case that
virtually all of his posting was stirring and perpetuating flames.

MoeBlee

.

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