Sorry Jamesy, but…
Wrong. There are many who choose to be their own judge and jury and have no need to have others tell them what a great person they are. I’m one of 'em. I know when I’ve made a good effort and when I haven’t. I don’t need any patronizing cheerleaders. Am I delusional? That’s YOUR definition, not mine.
That sounds good. I like closed self supporting systems. It’s like independance and it is much safer than dependance, which can destroy you at any time.
Who’s independent these days?
The only person who knows you is you. Who better to judge your thinking and actions?
Better, well, perhaps no one. But on a par, those very close to me. In some ways I am set up to be the worst judge and blind spots are just a given. And what I miss and misestimate can be both positive and negative.
So, I’ll use a variety of tools/vantages.
And then I suppose I was also thinking of the vast nearly unavoidable, range of interdependence we have in the modern world. Unless you head out in the woods with a survival knife, you are interdependent with people for just aboute everything. And even within a very dry, scientific outlook, the idea of an independent mind seems questionable to me. I don’t see some hard adn fast boundary, especially given how much of our learning and reactions are not conscious. We seem more like waystations. IOW the very self-judging you do probably has a lot to do with other people’s criteria you took in in the past and take in unconsciously today also.
I couldn’t make sense of this.
The person I was responding to has called for editing. Further, editing, as in the stuff editors do, is precisely to encourage better writing from writers, which in this context would be higher quality discussions. I think you are thinking of proofreading which is not what Typist has called for in the past, but rather something closer to what editors do with anything from articles to essays to full length books. And that includes a much more varied set of actions that what you described. And when one edits one’s own work, this is not simply correcting grammatical/spelling errors. It’s making the damn thing better.
If you mean ‘you’ in general, yes. If you mean me, I do, but I go here more.
When I read what some people say, I am not sure why they don’t. Or if they do go there, why they don’t mention it in the context of their complaints about here.
yeah, I just don’t think so.
Ad hom is when you focus on the person as if this was a real argument. Did not do that with Typist, made clear Typist was not the example. I was not arguing with the person I used in the example, without naming them. Not even sure they’re in the thread.
Typist was saying what ‘we all want’. Which is a focus on the ‘man’, but also not really an ad hom. I was responding to that idea about what ‘we all want’ and challenging the idea. First it is not what I want. Second, relevent to this example of my ‘loss of integrity’, I don’t think it makes sense given the situation. Given the options that are out there and the unliklihood that people keep doing what they don’t like if they are not getting something they want, especially in this kind of context, I don’t buy it. Especially if they, cough, cough, are claiming to be the rare rational person.
I mean, we are not talking about having to work at McDonalds because you are single parent and need money for rent and food. We are talking about participating in an online philosophy forum when there are other forums that have more people who actually know a decent amount of philosophy and can post with citations and references to philosophical works and do.
I gave an example of what might really be going on, since I don’t think the face value explanation works at all. There certainly could be other kinds of ‘secondary gain’, so to speak, that are really primary ones, for the person in my example, for others.
Basically I had to go ‘to the man’ since ‘the man’ is the topic. But it was no ad hom.
If your objection is that I ad hommed those wanting to make changes, well, no I didn’t do that either. I am disagreeing with Typist’s sense of what is going on with these people and his to the man descriptions of them, what they want, their, in his estimation, hypocrisy, etc. He referred to us all, so he was also referring to you as well, by the way. I think actually people’s participation, in terms of their choice to participate here, is rational. That is the root of my counterargument and I will likely stick with that sense until it is demonstrated otherwise. That they make a choice, over and over again, because it is working for them or they like it somehow or it allows them to have a role they like, etc. I think the choice/action is rational - meets their needs/desires - but not necessarily their explanations, given the options, etc.
But you missed something else important also: What pisses me off about ad homs is when they are used instead of arguments based on the what is written. Here, my example, not an ad hom, was a part of an argument.
For the same reasons I also get pissed off by evaluatory outbursts especially when they are used instead of a counterargument or even explanation: labeling with a value judgment instead of demonstrating anything. Like ‘well, there’s an example of silly thinking.’ Period. Or, as another example,
I did insult the unamed person in using them as an example in my argument. And a second time, here, earlier in this post, I did it again.
I dunno Mo, perhaps you can imagine why I haven’t given and am not going to give you a psychological analysis of iambiguous as requested in your out of the blue PM to me.
See if you can tie that in to the above. Context is a very large part of things for me. To go ad hom on myself. I also edit this, with the intention of improving it. I did also catch a couple of spelling errors, likely missed others.
So, are you ready to be liquidated by society and its imposed philosophy?
Exactly. If that’s not the case then there must be something wrong with you, or there might be some erroneous zone in your psyche that’s neurotic.
This is also a testament to the inability of any one individual coming to the knowledge of what is reasonable or right unanimously.
Once one comes to the realization that there is no singular such thing as Reality, action judging slows down and actions are done in a general automatic way in response to life around.
One word that JSS used once and that would be of benefit to me, at least, is “critique”–a thoughtful analysis of something written or how it’s interpreted. It isn’t fault-finding; it’s a teaching method. As someone said earlier, it depends on why the poster is at ILP. I want to learn, not just what other people think–unless what they think leads me to a new wisdom–but why they find my thoughts unacceptable, as written. Don’t just tell me that they’re not worth answering, tell me why and suggest ways for me to improve. A critique doesn’t have to be detailed; in fact, it can be general to a certain extent. “You’re post is difficult to understand because…”, “Do you mean to say…”, “Perhaps, if you approached the subject in this way…”
Most people here, it seems to me, feel they have something important to say or they wouldn’t have taken the time to write a post. To have their attempts at communication totally ignored can be construed as a slap in the face. That doesn’t mean a mod has to reply (because no matter under which hat s/he is responding, s/he is still a mod), but someone should make an attempt at understanding and make a comment. An OP, by itself, may not start a thread, but the first two or three comments might.
Just my thoughts on how to improve quality in the threads.
If the knowledge I have acquired over the span of my lifetime does not belong to me, but was presented as a sphere of knowledge from which I may pick and choose to use, then, if I do use it in order to get somewhere like truth or other buzzwords, I will fail. Because that is not my truth. That is not my position.
Just one more thing, Ernie–(a quote from Sesame Street)
The mods have done a good job at separating out various philosophies unto sub-groups–thank you. At the same time, sub-groups often overlap and the overlaps aren’t always recognized by either the reader or the writer. Is the Philosophy forum only for developing a personal way of living philosophy or can it overlap onto other philosophies–philosophy/neurology, philosophy/life, philosophy/thought, philosophy/language? Does philosophy rely only on logic and logical form/reasoning/rationality? If so, must a philosophy of life be so limited? 
finishedman and I are obviously ‘overlapping’ our responses, here. I think we’re both saying very similar things.
I’ll reiterate;
A) no one is “beyond pats on the back”, unless he is delusional.
Only through delusion does someone not care.
Despite lustful delusions of grandeur, “no man is an island”.
Wow! Such melodrama! No man is an island! Don’t going swimming in psychobabble too long, it corrodes the mind… You so miss the point… I’m just as ‘dependent’ as any other social animal in many ways, BUT I’m not just a sheep munching grass. I ‘care’ about a lot of things, but one of them isn’t giving a rat’s ass what you or anyone else thinks of what or who I am. I’m the judge of that, The only lustful delusions of grandeur belongs to anyone who mistakenly tries to label me with sanctimonious psychobabble. You don’t know me, I know me.
Enough of the side trip. This thread is about what is ‘quality’ philosophical discussion, not armchair psychoanalysis of people you’ve never met.
Do I need to reiterate again?
The point to “quality philosophy” on this forum is half for sake of the people’s interest who are currently on this forum but also half for sake of maintaining this forum against the propensity to become no more than a hostile environment that no one enjoys who is also someone with skills for quality philosophy.
It is common business sense to be reasonably friendly to the clientele that you intend to keep and not merely try to occasionally defend them from hostile characters, but also make their experience as welcoming as is reasonable.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone thinks” does not provide much of a foundation for “quality philosophy” nor “welcoming ambiance”.
James, there is just a teensy bit of difference in discussing ideas and/or concepts and assigning blanket assumptions about the personal character of any person or group of people, particularly labeling anyone as “delusional” who doesn’t meet your definitions. You played out your passive-aggressive game and I called you on it. Now you can stop with your “reiterations”. If you have any ideas about ideas and/or concepts without subtle put downs, post them here. We are interested in what might make quality philosophical discussion possible, not attacking the personal character of any member. It’s just good business sense to not let judgement of a person cloud their possible quality philosophical writings.
There is forum software which allows a thread to be rated. And/or for readers to vote that they ‘like’ , ‘find interesting’, ‘find helpful’ on a post or thread. Some software allows comments to be attached to a specific post.
In the absence of those kinds of features, it would be great if readers left positive feedback when they read a good post. That kind of behavior should be encouraged.
“Good reasoning.
Well thought out.
Righteous logic, dude.
Great post.”
Good idea! If that were put into practice across the membership, the whole site becomes the “Academy”…
This is a good point. I have to say, the positive feedback of a ‘like’ system, a ‘best of the forum’ board and so on is a good incentive to make good posts. Although, it can also be an incentive to deliver sharper put-downs or to promote group politics… but I’d be interested in giving it a try, if anyone knows how to implement it.
if likes were anonymous it would be less “groupy”
There has to be a Phbb wonk around here that could set this up. I agree with cap’t that keeping it anonymous would be best all around. Just this idea alone could satisfy the periodic clamor for a serious forum and perhaps “elevate” the general tone across all forums. Best of all, it wouldn’t create more work for you highly paid mods.
Some of our put down artists would hate it! 
I’ve seen it done on other phpBB boards, and anonymously, but it seems they made it themselves. I have a phpBB board, I’ll look for plugins.