Colin the Barbarian @[email protected]

Trying to do better

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@rejserin @FaredaVandeKaap @RichardDawkins counts as analysis.”

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@rejserin @FaredaVandeKaap @RichardDawkins No, you don't need to know the man to assess the argument. If your evaluation cannot stand without biographical gossip and character assassination, that's a sign of weakness in the case, not a principle of interpretation. “Context matters” does not mean “ad hominem now

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@GrahamSmith4 Have you heard of counterfactual hypotheticals? If you have. You know the answer and are being deliberately obtuse. If not, maybe find out.

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

Let's list the arguments I've seen: it wasn't a proper lecture; nobody was there; only 5 were there; it was a book promotion; he's a TERF, he's a Catholic, he's an associate of some obscure Harvard Professor; it doesn't matter; it does matter; it's a grift; he was paid to do it;

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@rejserin @FaredaVandeKaap @RichardDawkins Nonsense. I can read Hart, Raz, Dworkin whoever and evaluate their arguments and know nothing at all about the man. Knowing their personal biographies may make it more enjoyable,but it adds nothing of intellectual substance unless, as I said, you are doing intellectual history.

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@GrahamSmith4 You have given a clear answer to a question I did not ask. You know that. And if you don't then the least of your problems is arguing with me.

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@beccajiggens People that disagree with me are welcome at every lecture and seminar I give. They can ask any relevant question they want. They are not welcome to give an introductory 5 minute derogatory speech about me at the beginning of my lecture. Spot the difference?

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@GrahamSmith4 I asked you something very specific. Now that is the second time you have evaded it. What I asked was not ambiguous or unclear in any way. I smell the stink of hypocrisy. When you have an honest answer to the question I asked and not to some other question, get back to me.

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@GrahamSmith4 deficient in some aspects of your conduct, urging your colleagues to boycott you & promising to come round for a "die in" next week. Well how about it? Good enough for Foran in your opinion. So should be good for you, no?

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@GrahamSmith4 And you never gave me an answer to the hypothetical of whether you would be cool to have few lads come round to your workplace, stop you getting on with your work, read out a little speech which contained a few derogatory comments about you implying that you were morally

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@rejserin @FaredaVandeKaap @RichardDawkins unless you are writing intellectual history. But even then they can't merely be unsubstantiated opinions.

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@rejserin @FaredaVandeKaap @RichardDawkins Yes, I knew that and in my neck of the woods we play the ball, not the man. The ideas and arguments have to be assessed on their own merits. His personal characteristics and your or my perception of his motives are utterly irrelevant to that assessment

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@GrahamSmith4 Bullshit. Standing up for civility and against the tin pot tyranny of those that shout loudest is not stoking a "culture-war". Of course you find it rhetorically convenient to frame it in that way, but nobody is obliged to accede to your personal framing.

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@GrahamSmith4 Has it never occurred to you, even once, that one can pursue more than one objective at the same time? Try it, it's enriching.

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@rejserin @FaredaVandeKaap @RichardDawkins that what you think scruntiny is?

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@rejserin @FaredaVandeKaap @RichardDawkins And what scrutiny exactly did a derogatory harangue in front of his lecture audience open him up to? As far as I could make out from the recording they said nothing whatsoever, not a single thing, about the intellectual content of his arguments. Just a lot of ad homs. Or is

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@LucyHunterB @WeCareAboutMH Yes, I missed that bit as well. I think he consigned it to the flames.

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@GrahamSmith4 If it is all puff & huff why should you give a damn what I think? Why not just tend your own garden?

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@rejserin @FaredaVandeKaap @RichardDawkins Those words were read out in the lecture itself. You know that. Pretending the delivery context is irrelevant is just a dodge. The issue is not whether the quote existed on X; it is whether an academic event should be used as the vehicle for it.

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@CaraPac46808618 @runthinkwrite @UniofOxford @WilliamJHague No. It is free speech for everyone. It is not a licence to hijack someone else’s lecture and then whine that people objected to the sabotage. But I've made the same point several times and you seem unable or unwilling to understand the distinction.

[Colin the Barbarian @[email protected] @OxSoc]

@CaraPac46808618 @runthinkwrite @UniofOxford @WilliamJHague ? I'd give you an answer, but I can't understand your grammar