I won't speak for Peter
& it wasnt primarily your logic I objected to, Mark; but your tone
if we shared conclusions andmethods to get them there wouldnt be much to
talk about
so you may be right
>I think it's amply clear from Peter's post that the "if" here isn't a
>question but a way of saying "given that," or, "if, as I think is the
>case." Prefixing an if to a statement, in any case, doesn't make it somehow
>immune to analysis.
of course it doesnt - and I do find an element of questioning in it
>As to "either/or," belief/non-belief is rather like being a virgin--one is
>or one isn't.
No. I disagree. It isn't like that.
> The only other option is "I don't know,"
I offered you one earlier. Maybe....
That can include or stand alongside a set of hypotheses
and in my clinical
>practice I did once work with a young woman who really didn't know. In the
>matter of belief "I don't know"is either a cry of anguish or an admission
>that it's not an issue to which one devotes much thought. Neither seem to
>apply to Peter as he presents his thoughts.
There, as a grating man once said, you go again.
When there is a stone ball rolling behind you and a cliff in front of you
and the question is What shall we do? then the reply I don't know may be a
cry of anguish
It may also be a statement that there is insufficient information and you'll
suspend judgement
Not devoting much thought to these issues might be a sensible and even
healthy approach if we are talking about clinical practice
I was told the other day that in many parts of Africa rivers are called I
don't know because that's how the inhabitants answered when the Normans
arrived. But they still knew more about those rivers than the Europeans...
I have just discovered that at no time has the river in the town I am in
currently has ever had a name. It's always been called The River. And where
my grandfather came from they had more recently to invent an adjective for
themselves because the rest of the world when it paid attention found
Islanders a bit indefinite
Someone requiring psychiatric support may well need to be dissuaded from
saying I don't know; but in many circumstances it can point to health and it
can open mental doors
>As to "You're free to believe whatever makes you happy," you seem not to
>notice irony. And I thought that failure was a purely American virtue.
Wrong again, Mark. There's a Bergman film which ends with a man pacing in a
circle saying I want my freedom - the shot becomes a crane shot showing all
the space around him which he will not enter because he is going in circles
he was either / or
I am uncomfortable with this idea that USAmericans don't get irony and the
Brits do. I haven't found that to be true. But I have noticed that on your
side there's a feeling that saying something is meant ironically makes it ok
I think I understood your tone
>I simply don't understand your final quip, tho I expect that it wasn't
>meant kindly.
It certainly wasn't meaning it unkindly. I keep coming up against an idea,
predominantly USAmerican, but not exclusively, that beliefs may be adjusted
as if they were tactical assumptions
and the element in your remark which I judged rightly or wrongly to be less
than ironic seemed to be going in that direction. if that's wrong i withdraw
it
i have no desire to return the tone i believe i heard (no irony on believe)
in your post - otherwise i wouldnt have jumped in; and i wasnt the only one
to hear that tone
i'll also register that ive forgotten my netiquette sometimes so i'm not
feeling righteous just protective of any astonishing exchange that's been
running this last day or 2
all best
L
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