Today

In class, I experienced another instance of my pet-peeve argument. It's when some individual claims, after having a great deal of trouble with an argument or premise in the text, that the author is using his terms in a perfunctory fashion, according to what are ("obviously") ulterior motives. This argument can be phrased like this, "Well, he just wants to make his terms mean that so he can prove the point, right?" or "Well, it's all just a bunch of words that he's using to illustrate it - - they don't have to mean anything."

This is the biggest bunch of intellectual folly and laziness. It just makes me mad.

For one thing, it's doing a huge disservice to your author. If you can't find either a logical fallacy in the argument or a problem with first premises you have absolutely no reason to conclude that it's the author's sophistical intentions, rather than your lack of understanding, which is to blame.

This argument was used against St. Thomas today. That made it that much worse. Yes, I got fiesty.

This is the reason I'm having such a hard time with my seminar reading right now, too. The empiricists more or less argue like this: "Well, sure, fine, that follows - if you believe words mean anything." At which you stare at your book in disbelief. He's just objected to the use of language; not word choice, but the use of language itself. What's more, he just used language to do it. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHhhhhhhh! How do you deal with people that daft?

Well, anyway . . .

The Deans gave us a party with guac and beer today, because they'd heard that the Juniors were suffering from low morale and discouragement. Which, well, yeah . . . we are . . .

. . . so, yeah . . the beer helped the Juniors over age 21. As for the rest of us, well . . .

the morale just kept sinking. . . .

(j.k.! ;)

Really, though, Dr. M, the Dean, sat and spoke with a bunch of us about our seminar troubles. He needed another beer afterwards . . . .

. . Poor Dr. M. Now his morale is low, too.

So I suppose I should stop this cheery message just about now. :) Have a great week, everyone!

Much Love to you all,
Emily