opinions vs knowledge

From: Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]>
Date: Wed 28 Aug 2002 - 15:17:22 CEST

Again, I ask why are evangelistic opinions posted to this discussion
site? The reply to my rejection of the evangelistic post about women
having innate 'love' capacities while men do not and therefore, they
can 'save the world' was yet another post filled with illogical
opinions, this time from Thommandel (don't know his/her real name).

I don't think that readers want a sentence by sentence deconstruction
of that reply, but I could show how each sentence is based on nothing
more than subjective opinion. Each collection of sentences, when
framed in any kind of logical form, leads to an invalid 'conclusion'.
The reply has nothing to do with knowledge or information. These are
nothing more than subjective non-empirical and illogical opinions,
filled with pure speculation, with moving from 'some' to 'all', with
lots of 'perhaps' suggestions suddenly moving to 'always'; with false
innuendoes, with insertion of emotive fallacies - ad hominem, ad
populam,...and....false data, false links, sentences following each
other without any valid logical or empirical relation.

Again - what does this type of post have to do with the scientific,
rational examination of information? I could use these posts for
students to take apart in my critical thinking and logic classes -
but - what are they doing on this list?

Edwina Taborsky
39 Jarvis St. #318
Toronto, Ontario M5E 1Z5
(416) 361.0898
Received on Wed Aug 28 15:18:17 2002

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