Comments on: Diversity is the Last Thing We Need

By: Patrick Mulligan

Patrick Mulligan — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:29:12 +0000

No, that's a statement of fact. You can tell because it doesn't start with, "In my opinion…"

By: Raymond Ingles

Raymond Ingles — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:24:49 +0000

Mr. Mulligan – That's only your opinion.

By: Patrick Mulligan

Patrick Mulligan — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:42:08 +0000

Well then you clearly aren't qualified to deliver a commencement speech. I guess Ben Stein is in good company.

By: Raymond Ingles

Raymond Ingles — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:50:13 +0000

Well, Mr. Mulligan – in my opinion, this is just an opinion – following the logic of your position leads to the gulag and the detention camp, and also that you worship ham sandwiches. (Fortunately, since I called that an opinion, it can't be proven false!)

By: Patrick Mulligan

Patrick Mulligan — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:48:27 +0000

Raymond,

Precisely! I'm glad you understand now. As long as I reject your premise that the quotation you snipped from and that I posted in full in post #72 is a statement of fact that you are capable of "proving" one way or the other (particularly with links to blog posts that do not address the quotation or any argument particular to Ben Stein), and you insist that it is a statement of fact in spite of what it actually says; and as along as you insist that this supposed "fact" establishes a question of Ben Stein's competence, and that such question constitues a justification for excluding him from delivering a commencement address, in spite of historical examples of far less qualified academics and radicals of a left-leaning political persuasion being allowed to speak, you are merely stating the same thing over and over, to which I am responding with the same thing over and over. I have to admire your resolve – I think you're going on 20 posts now. I'm going to have to give up at some point, because you clearly never tire!

I don't believe that everything is a value judgment – just those things that qualitatively fit the definition of the term.

By: Raymond Ingles

Raymond Ingles — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:32:20 +0000

Well, Mr. Mulligan, it's not like I haven't been clear either, as in comment #76. "Calling something an opinion or value judgement doesn't make it so. As the saying goes, 'You're entitled to your own opinion; you're not entitled to your own facts.'"

It's actually funny, since many other conservatives are dead set against the idea that everything's just a value judgement. Oh, well.

By: Mickey G

Mickey G — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:28:48 +0000

Seems to me this thread has run it's course. Circular non-logic abounds. Time to go on to new issues.

By: Patrick Mulligan

Patrick Mulligan — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:03:55 +0000

Shoot. There were supposed to be mock HTML tags indicating around the first and third lines. The humor is ruined without them.

By: Patrick Mulligan

Patrick Mulligan — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:01:27 +0000

Anything prefaced by "in my opinion…" is a value judgment

Append "in my opinion…" to "violent videogames lead you to killing people" and it suddenly becomes a judgment – not a statement of fact. Judgments cannot be "proven" – only facts can. A person so fervently pedantic about semantic distinctions, especially in the context of logical and scientific terms, should certainly know the difference.

And lest we forget, even if Ben Stein had said "It is a matter of fact that science leads you to killing people" and was incorrect, that still wouldn't be a historically good reason to exclude him from speaking.

I apologize that I made that so ambiguous in the other 20 posts where I said exactly the same thing, to which you responded with exactly the same thing. Maybe the echo in here is coming from your head…

By: Raymond Ingles

Raymond Ingles — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:34:27 +0000

Mr. Mulligan – An echo, yes. You continually repeat claims with no justification.

Is the proposition "violent videogames lead you to killing people" also a value judgement, "[t]hat could [not] be "proven" true or false"? A simple "Yes" or "No" would be sufficient, though a "Yes, because…" or "No, because…" along with your reasoning would be nice.