From the fact that an attribution of motive can be incorrect it does not at all follow that a correct attribution is somehow a report of something internal. Your "therefore" thus doesn't hold.

I'll wait for Jay to clarify whether or not this is what he meant, but if it is, I agree with him.

As I understood the discussion, the point was about whether or not there is an absolute truth to the matter whether someone acted from a particular motive. I denied this, and Jay said that scientists understand very well the point which I denied to be true, philosophers have trouble with it.
So why would natural scientists have expertise relevant to the question under discussion? I claim it as falling within the expertise of philosophers.
Your rhetorical question is irrelevant.

Having known several philosophy students (both undergraduate and graduate), I again have to agree with Jay on this one--philosophers do have trouble with the concept of absolute truth. I have actually seen these people sit around and construct "ironclad" proofs of propositions that are clearly absurd, by means of logical and rhetorical hair-splitting (not unlike the approach you have taken on this forum). I have also, on at least one occasion, been interrupted during a scientific debate with such helpful observations as "you can't prove anything because you can't prove the universe exists."

No and no. I didn't mean to say that expertise is wholly unimportant, but I deny that expertise means that everybody else has to keep their mouth shut.

The problem is, many people here have repeatedly attempted to explain to you why those with the relevant expertise have no problem accepting that the "official" story of the September 11 attacks is substantially accurate, and why many of the purported anomalies in that story either are not anomalous, or have innocent explanations. You and your cohorts, however, persistently ignore these efforts, and by means of rhetorical gymnastics, tortured reasoning, and just plain handwaving, attempt to explain them away (for example, by claiming that no other physicists besides Jones are speaking out because they are afraid of losing research money). Your reason for so doing is clearly that you are desperate to find evidence of a conspiracy in order to further your admitted political agenda. Further, you have nothing to lose by continued conspiracy mongering--even if you can't prove anything, you still get to attack the US Government. So it's a win-win situation for you and other 9/11 conspiracists.

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor