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Originally Posted by JayUtah
The problem, as always, is that you and Turbonium refuse to play by even the Socratic rules. You take up a position, yes, and submit to questions. But as soon as the dialogue begins to go badly for you, you withdraw from it in one clever way or another. The Socratic method is meant to test the underpinnings of an argument; there is no presumption the argument will stand or fall. This distinction is where you and Socrates part ways.
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I see you are a specialist in the Socratic method. What, according to you,
are the rules?
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Originally Posted by JayUtah
If we take up a position that the official story on, say, WTC collapse is sustainable according to the evidence, and you Socratically question the basis of that position, you very quickly run up against things you don't know. And when the root basis of some belief turns out to be, "This is something we as experts know from our study and practice, whereas you in your ignorance do not," you offer the irrational assertion that such expertise is irrelevant!
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I have
not said that it was irrelevant. I
have said that that constituted insufficient grounds for me to accept your position.
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Originally Posted by JayUtah
Similarly if you take up a position that a certain tenet of the conspiracy theory is credible, and we Socratically reveal that it is based on an untenable presumption (e.g., "Ascribing a motive to someone is equivalent to that person actually having such a motive," or "All eyewitness testimony to a true event must be entirely consistent") or selective consideration, or is contradicted by evidence, you simply abdicate your advocate's position as if this satisfies Socrates.
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The second presumption is Turbonium's; the first presumption is your misunderstanding of what I was putting forward in that discussion.
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Originally Posted by JayUtah
But you'll just say that you refuse to make it a normative discussion...
Not necessarily. In your question
please define "us" and "justifiably".
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now that's a good one! The point being that it is exactly the point of the discussion to establish what in this context would be justifiable. So I can't define that here and now. It is not yet defined at the outset of the discussion; that's the whole point.
('us' is shorthand for something like: any rational person who is interested in getting some answer to this question).