On Thu, 13 May 1999, tony ralph wrote:
> Ian wrote:
> "Tony, what evidence do you have that tens of thousands of people have been
> killed and buried? I've just come back from Albania, and its not the
> information i'm receiving from refugees I talked to; but I'm eager to view
> any evidence you have."
> "Tens of thousands" may even be accurate or close mathematically, but I use
> it here in a representative style in place of words like "horror",
> "mass-murder".
Hrm, but when you say "tens of thousands have been killed", it sounds like
you actually mean that tens of thousands have been killed....
> Evidence is a trite academic term
Really? Shall we just make up whatever stories we think we can get away
with in order to support our positions? (A fairly obvious Kantian problem
there, anyway.) The problem is that if you say 10 000 were killed, and
then later it turns out that 10 000 could not possibly have been killed,
then your rhetorical point suddenly turns to your rhetorical disadvantage.
Matthew
---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
dear readers, my apologies.
I'm drifting in and out of sleep.
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> Ian wrote:
> "Tony, what evidence do you have that tens of thousands of people have been
> killed and buried? I've just come back from Albania, and its not the
> information i'm receiving from refugees I talked to; but I'm eager to view
> any evidence you have."
> "Tens of thousands" may even be accurate or close mathematically, but I use
> it here in a representative style in place of words like "horror",
> "mass-murder".
Hrm, but when you say "tens of thousands have been killed", it sounds like
you actually mean that tens of thousands have been killed....
> Evidence is a trite academic term
Really? Shall we just make up whatever stories we think we can get away
with in order to support our positions? (A fairly obvious Kantian problem
there, anyway.) The problem is that if you say 10 000 were killed, and
then later it turns out that 10 000 could not possibly have been killed,
then your rhetorical point suddenly turns to your rhetorical disadvantage.
Matthew
---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
dear readers, my apologies.
I'm drifting in and out of sleep.
---------------------------------(R.E.M.)----------------------------------