A quick revisit of the Youtube Convo.

A reader reached out to me letting me know that some Gangadeanians continued the Youtube convo between Anderson and Spencer, to which they attempted to respond. However, this reader (writing under the pseudonym, Hank M and wishing to remain anonymous) alleges that his/her two followup comments, which were submitted a week ago, never showed up.

I've stated several times that the Gangadeanians have trouble keeping basic distinctions straight--for all their talk of clarity and reason, it's a bit ironic. I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but the latest comments do a fine job of illustrating just what I mean--straight from the horses mouth (sorry, I'll stop horsing around).

Both G.A. Goodrich and Samuel are making the same errors that Anderson, Gangadean, and Burton have made repeatedly. As Goodrich's first comment illustrates, he seems to think that if someone allows for the mere possibility that any of their beliefs are mistaken, that makes intelligible dialogue impossible. But how does that follow? As I've pointed out in the past, that's not something that's true by definition--so they've got some explaining to do. As Spencer stated clearly in his exchange with Anderson, he affirms that reason is ontological (or that 'a is a') even if he doesn't claim that he couldn't possibly be mistaken about it. What team-Gangadean has failed to do is to explain just why merely believing (even to a high degree) that an argument is not the same as a non-argument is not enough for a meaningful philosophical dialogue to continue.

You can see the same kind of mistake in Samuel's comment that Spencer is "unable to distinguish between a and non-a." Again, you can believe something even while you think it's at least possible for you to be mistaken about it. We do this all of the time! And if someone like Spencer believes that "a is distinct from non-a", then why are they unable to distinguish between them? In fact, to believe that "a is distinct from non-a" is a way of distinguishing between the two. So Samuel's comment is trivially, false.

Fortunately, any reader with enough patience can look through the comments and see that contrary to what Anderson and Goodrich insist, there was never a sound proof given for Anderson's claim that "if there is no clarity at the basic level, then intelligible conversation is impossible." As I noted before, the closest thing to an "argument" was Anderson's statement that "if nothing is clear, then perhaps an argument is a non-argument." But just like Goodrich after him, Anderson never actually showed us why the mere possibility that an argument is a non-argument would thereby make all intelligible dialogue (or the evaluations of arguments), impossible. As long as someone believes that an argument is not a non-argument, that sound is not non-sound, and the like, it makes perfect sense for them to talk and evaluate an argument. Since Anderson and company are claiming we need more (i.e., clarity), they owe us an argument.

I'm not sure why Hank M's comments were not posted by the moderator. Perhaps the latter got busy, or perhaps they assumed that I was the one commenting. At any rate, Hank M basically asked Goodrich for the proof again, pointing out that his snarky remark lacked Anderson's alleged proof. He also pressed Samuel to explain just why he thought Spencer was unable to distinguish between 'a and non-a'--both fine points.