The thing is: I am not so sure of what I believe and disbelieve either.
Be that as it may, your expressions of belief, disbelief, and disavowal are ill-timed. It is not that you are indecisive. It is that you are indecisive in a pattern than first engenders and then forestalls debate. This casts doubt on your claim to be interested in constructive discussion.
Typically you advocate some idea. And you support it until some well-argued rebuttal comes along, whereupon you disavow the idea. You don't concede it. You don't defend it. All of a suddent you just say it's someone else's idea therefore you have no stake in arguing for it. But that's not how the discussion started. You simply enforce an ambiguity that never requires you to admit that your critics may be well-reasoned.
...it has already been established that I am a conspiracist, so that you have good reason to 'gang up' on me...
Rather several people have observed that you follow certain well-defined patterns of illogic favored by conspiracy theorists and reasonably characteristic of their approach. They have cited examples of that, which you never address.
If you want people to stop believing you're a conspiracist, then stop acting like one. But complaining that you've been hastily characterized and then categorically dismissed falls flat if you can't discuss the characterization.
You advocate conspiracy theories (at least until they become untenable, whereafter you try to say you never advocated them). You do so according to fallacious methods of reasoning that conspiracists typically use. You express agreement with other conspiracists and urge others to take them seriously. How does that not make you a conspiracy theorist? What critical aspect of your definition of conspiracist do you argue you don't fit?
Anyway, as far as I know, this "pernicious method" that I am perceived as employing is a philosophical approach.
When did you abandon the political approach?
If your conclusions are blatantly motivated by political belief, then it hardly matters whether you attempt to use philosophy, science, economics, or religion to try to support them. In all such cases it's a red herring. And at least one other student of philosophy has disagreed that your activities here really constitute philosophy.
To my knowledge the "philosophical approach" has not discovered a better cause in any accident or criminal investigation than one determined by the methods known to work well in each of those fields. I strongly question whether your approach -- even if you actually followed it -- is applicable to any of the questions we normally discuss.
Finally "pernicious" is your word: I would instead say "obfuscatory". I don't think you're practicing philosophy here; I think you're using terms and concepts from philosophy to muddy up and extend the debate meaninglessly.
The days when Socrates was executed for corrupting Athens' youth by not really pushing any line in particular are not so far behind us as it may sometimes seem.
When you can demonstrate the wisdom of Socrates then you can be compared to him.
The good old, "They laughed at [fill in blank] too," argument falls flat when you realize they laughed at P.T. Barnum -- rightly so.
|