If you think that it is good enough... what, according to you, was the motive of the alleged islamic extremist terrorists in attacking the Pentagon - even as a secondary target - over and above the twin towers? The official conspiracy theory should be able to tell a story about that as well.

I can put my two cents in here. I believe Islamic terrorists had much less to loose upon failure, so would be more inclined to overkill than your evil government black ops agents who would be risking everything. And I mean everything. If what you suggest is true, and something goes wrong and they are found out, it would be arguably the worst political crisis in our nation's history. It would mean the end of policital parties, jail time, death penalties, possibly something approaching civil war.

Overkill would be just icing on the cake for Islamic terrorists, but I believe that a government operation would need to be a tad bit more conservative, IMO. The added risk of flying a missile into the Pentagon in front of hundreds of potential eye witnesses, and then claiming it was an airliner seems to me to be something better left in spy novels and 007 movies.

Lack of evidence by CTs aside, IMO the government can't even manage to tap phones or break into hotel rooms without getting busted; the idea that they could successfully pull off an unimaginably complex and risky stunt just doesn't fit.

I have to call BS on this. You, the reader, may impose your own meaning on the writing. That does not change the author's meaning of the writing, which is the actual authority of its meaning. Others can debate and contradict what the author meant, but the author is the final authority.

This strikes me as word salad. Again, because others misunderstand, it does not follow that the author is not the authority on its meaning. They may have poorly chosen their words (as your previous posting proves), but their meaning still stands.

We could read all kinds of meaning into your choice of the word "Arabs" in the previous posting. However, you've told us that it was a mistake and did not convey the meaning you intended.

Do you now propose that your meaning is invalid because we get to interpret your post how we wish?

"Argument from authority" does not hold so much weight around here. And philosophy has very little hard evidence to back it up. Are you really attempting to say that an author has no ability to claim what he or she really meant with their writing? How can you possibly prove such a thing?

And, if you could prove it, does that not completely undermine your previous retraction?

__________________
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain

Avatar courtesy of Bunny.

I don't think much of a "story" is required--it's very obvious to most people that terrorists who hate America would want to kill Americans and strike at symbols of American power and prestige, such as the White House, the Capitol building, and the Pentagon.

Do you find it odd that terrorists would want to try to destroy the White House? I can guarantee you that practically no Americans find it odd. But if the hijackers of American 77 were unable to locate the White House from the air, what were their other obvious target choices at the time? The Capitol? Likely already the target of United 93. The Washington Monument? Embarrassing for the US, definitely, but ground casualties would have been minimal. The Supreme Court? Same problem as the White House--hard to spot from the air. Fly around looking for a large skyscraper? They're right next to Andrews Air Force Base, so they don't know how soon they might be intercepted and shot down, plus they're likely eager to "get it over with." The Pentagon is a large target and is easily located from the air, for obvious reasons.

Finally, do you believe that the terrorists would have been content just to give the Bush Administration an excuse to attack Iraq and Afghanistan? Assuming for the sake of argument that bin Laden was behind the attacks, do you seriously imagine that had he been approached by the leader of another terrorist faction who was planning a similar attack and offered bin Laden four additional teams of hijackers, that bin Laden would have declined the offer? Do you think that if bin Laden had had a suitcase nuke, he wouldn't have tried to sent it along on one of the planes? (Okay, so that probably wouldn't have worked, but you get the idea.) The point is, why do you assume that the terrorists wouldn't have wanted to stage as many separate attacks as possible?

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--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

The Pentagon is indeed a large target - from above. If the goal of the terrorists was to inflict the greatest damage and largest number of casualties possible, flying the plane down into the Pentagon roof is far better than into the side wall.

I disagree. An airliner that plummets straight into the ground essentially buries itself in the ground over a small radius. An airliner that strikes the ground horizontally creates a much larger swath of destruction.

It's also extremely easier to accomplish than trying to skim along a few feet from the ground at top speed and hit a wall.

And you say this from your vast experience piloting large commercial aircraft in steep dives?

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

This line of questioning only works if you're trying to attribute the same motives and desired outcomes to both Al-Qaeda and the U.S. government. I really hope that's not what you're trying to do...

Well, there is cylindrical lighting and shading across the fuselage with maximum brightness along the top (see). Notice the police car here, its top and hood are fully sunlit and bright white, while its side is self-shaded and is still white! Yet you assume that the vertical stabilizer is self-shaded and as dark as the trees. Since most of your alleged stabilizer is in front of dark trees, most of it should appear white in contrast to the dark trees. The police car shows that a white object in shading is still white, just not a bright has its parts in direct sunlight. I think it's you who needs to pay closer attention!

I've already explained that smoke does not come out of commercial jet engines. Contrails are not smoke but condensation that forms when hot air mixes with cold high-altitude air. There is some residual dust in the wake of Flight 77, but nothing as bright as its sunlit fuselage that you think is smoke. If it was smoke, the plane would be pouring out horrendous quantities of smoke, but none of the witnesses reported that. It's weird how the obvious object that is identified in the official report as Flight 77 (see page 13) is turned into "smoke" and a fuzzy dark spot that lacks any attributes of a plane is turned into the plane. Frankly, it's so incredulous it's not worth debating. ~Ian

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Goddard's Journal

If what you suggest is true, and something goes wrong and they are found out, it would be arguably the worst political crisis in our nation's history. It would mean the end of policital parties, jail time, death penalties, possibly something approaching civil war.

[political]Speaking as a "mainstream" Republican, I can attest that if I truly believed there were any credible evidence that Bush and company had any hand in the September 11 attacks, I would leave no stone unturned in an attempt to get at the truth. Were I to discover that Bush really was behind it, I'd personally volunteer to push the button to send the lethal injection into his arm (or lead a lynch mob to the White House if he refused to come out). However, all the evidence I've seen is demonstrably non-credible, and all claims of credibility appear to be products of ignorance and/or severe political bias.[/political]

The added risk of flying a missile into the Pentagon in front of hundreds of potential eye witnesses, and then claiming it was an airliner seems to me to be something better left in spy novels and 007 movies.

Especially considering that the Pentagon contained a large number of people who could undoutedly have been expected to have been able tell the difference between a transport aircraft and a cruise missile.

Lack of evidence by CTs aside, IMO the government can't even manage to tap phones or break into hotel rooms without getting busted; the idea that they could successfully pull off an unimaginably complex and risky stunt just doesn't fit.

I was talking to my best friend, who works in downtown D.C., and he had another good example of that--the response to Hurricane Katrina. But I'm sure the conspiracists will just claim that that was intentional neglect.

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--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

Well, with political issues being out of bounds on this board this is a tricky area, but...

Because it wasn't needed. Because, with the US having acquired an excuse to go to war, it has all worked like a dream in the past five years: islamic extremism is in many countries much stronger now than before 9/11. That is a direct reaction to those wars. bin Laden most likely has it exactly the way he wanted - if he was the one behind the attacks. So why do more than needed?

I believe their goal was to terrorize people. Similar to the goals of suicide bombers. Show that they can strike us anywhere at anytime and then use that as a bargaining chip.

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

I have to call BS on this.
Fine. Not the first time I see such a reaction to philosophy.

You, the reader, may impose your own meaning on the writing. That does not change the author's meaning of the writing, which is the actual authority of its meaning.
Quite true.

Others can debate and contradict what the author meant, but the author is the final authority.
No - what I am denying is that the author is the final authority on the author's meaning. He has better access to that meaning than most, but he's not the final authority.

This strikes me as word salad.
Again, not an unusual reaction. But hey, have you never come across statments from other specialisms which struck you as meaningless?

Again, because others misunderstand, it does not follow that the author is not the authority on its meaning.
Indeed not. Have I said such a thing?

We could read all kinds of meaning into your choice of the word "Arabs" in the previous posting. However, you've told us that it was a mistake and did not convey the meaning you intended.

Do you now propose that your meaning is invalid because we get to interpret your post how we wish?
No; I would describe what happened as follows. I made an uncareful statement. The meaning of it did not fit what I had intended to say. Therefore I issued another statement, which provides (further) evidence of what I had intended to say (but unfortunately didn't). The meaning of the first statement did not change, but in a discussion one tries to focus on what the others intend to say, even if sometimes they word it awkwardly.

"Argument from authority" does not hold so much weight around here.
Really?
I once had an exchange with Jay about that. Basically I remember him as saying that he did not use an argument from authority, but that he had shown previously that he knew what he was talking about, and that therefore I should accept his statement, since I had shown (according to him) to be completely ignorant.
I wonder how that differs from the current situation.

And philosophy has very little hard evidence to back it up.
Not the evidence that you would like, no. No hard physical evidence. Instead, talk about concepts, how we use them, and how inconsistencies in these uses may be solved. All woolly talk, really.

Are you really attempting to say that an author has no ability to claim what he or she really meant with their writing?
Ability, yes, of course. But we shouldn't take an authors claim, based on first-person authority, at face value. There may be situations in which others rightly show an author to be mistaken about what they meant to write.
That is not often the case, hence many people's reluctance to this idea; but even when it is the case, it may not be recognised as such because the idea seems so alien.

How can you possibly prove such a thing?
I can't, not with 'hard' evidence - see above. Sorry, that's how philosophy works.

And, if you could prove it, does that not completely undermine your previous retraction?
No. See above for my story of that.

Because it wasn't needed. Because, with the US having acquired an excuse to go to war, it has all worked like a dream in the past five years: islamic extremism is in many countries much stronger now than before 9/11. That is a direct reaction to those wars. bin Laden most likely has it exactly the way he wanted - if he was the one behind the attacks. So why do more than needed?

So now you're an expert on Osama bin Laden's motives? Why do you assume that his only motive was to provoke the US into attacking some Islamic country? How do you know he wasn't also motivated by some incredibly deep hatred of the United States that would cause him to want to kill as many Americans and attack as many symbols of America as possible? Have you talked to him lately?

Additionally, evidence has emerged that the original plan called for 10 airliners to be hijacked, five on the East Coast and five on the West Coast, but the West Coast part of the plan was dropped due to a lack of resources. Evidently the fifth group of hijackers could not be formed because not enough al-Qaida operatives made it into the United States. Moussaoui claimed to have been part of this group; whether this is true or not is uncertain. BTW, Brumsen, do you assume that Moussaoui was drugged or tortured into confessing? If not, what do you make of his testimony?

__________________
--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

Bargaining? For what?

What the heck I guess before we all get shut down for politics I'll offer this, and throw myself on the mercy of the omnipotent moderator's bench:

But how do you know he knew exactly what was needed? Like I said before, he could afford overkill--it appears that unlike a government plot, being discovered as the perpetrator is exactly what he wanted. For him it was win-win, but for a government black ops team being discovered it would be a never-ending nightmare.

In order to equate the motive of Al Queda with a super secret evil government black ops, you have to claim that the black ops effort could very well be back firing, and Al Queda's apparent plan seems to have worked perfectly.

(I for one welcome our moderator overlords)

No; have you? I have been reading some fairly serious books, and watching documentaries on the subject. Your story of his motives fits very well with what official propaganda would have you believe. Why should it be more credible than my version?

What's the source of that evidence?

No, but he had been locked up for a long time and he's obviously a nutter. So you could expect him to say anything. I don't attach much value to his testimony for that reason.

I agree that you have a point there, twinstead.

It depends how you read "could afford", though. It's not impossible his organisation was stretching to its max, with the 9/11 attacks. Such a strike on the Pentagon is not planned on a rainy Sunday - excuse me, Saturday - afternoon. So why stretch his organisation so much if it could be foreseen that bringing the twin towers down would do nicely?

Not all philosophy is nonsense, but some expressions of it are. To take a comment that some specific post (or part of a post) is nonsense as a reaction to "philosophy" and not as a reaction to that specific posts, its contents and perceived intentions, is a bit strange.
Then who is?
Why, when you get a negative reaction against something you said, do you hide behind your specialism? Couldn't it be that it is your representation of the specialism is in error, and that the reaction is negative because of that, not because of some antagonism towards or lack of understanding of your specialism?
You seem to have given that impressoin to some people, including me. Furthermore, you have at least said that he is not the final authority.
The argument from authority is used when you quote an authority (a celebrity, a professor, a politician, ...) that lacks the necessary expertise. A philosopher is not an authority on how buildings are demolished. Jay used an argument from expertise, which is perfectly acceptable.

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Yes, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, the Khobar towers bombing and the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya (I think) and the first world trade center bombing were all directly caused by our invasion of Afganistan and Iraq.

Ha, ha. No, of course I did not say that. Do you mean to deny my statement that islamic extremism is in many countries much stronger now than before 9/11. That is a direct reaction to those wars?

But in what way would the twin towers do nicely? We are talking terrorists here. This is exactly one of the main reasons that the Government conspiracy is so unrealistic. The government had a clear goal (start a war) and ran a terible risk (discovery), so they had to get the maximal effect with a minimum of risks: hence: only hit the WTC, and don't attack the Pentagon.
The terrorists, on the other hand, want to hit the US as hard as possible, not as hard as necessary. They want to hit it in the commercial heart (the WTC), but also in the political (White House, Capitol) and/or military heart (Pentagon), to make the humiliation even bigger, and to show the weakness of the USA (which can't even defend its military headquarters). Furthermore, they have no idea what resistance they will encounter and have to bet on different horses, to maximize the chance that some of them will succeed. Terrorists want to create terror, and the more attacks, the more terror you get. That is also why they had follow-up actions like in Madrid.

This is shown as well by the failure of the terrorist attack with the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. Why would the government do such a thing? What purpose does this crash have in the US government conspiracy plan?

All indicications point to a terrorist attack, and none point to a government organized attack. There is no evidence of someone in the US government organizing it, there is no evidence that any of the main elements of the reported story (e.g. that a large passenger plane flew into the Pentagon) is false, there is no evidence for the 9/11 conspiracy at all.

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

No - what I am denying is that the author is the final authority on the author's meaning. He has better access to that meaning than most, but he's not the final authority.
Then who is?
No-one. Why should there be a final authority on that?

Again, because others misunderstand, it does not follow that the author is not the authority on its meaning.
Indeed not. Have I said such a thing?
You seem to have given that impressoin to some people, including me. Furthermore, you have at least said that he is not the final authority.
I have said that others may justifiedly disagree with the author about the meaning of his statements. This is because "what the author meant" is not a matter of fitting other's understanding of his statements to his internal mental state.

The argument from authority is used when you quote an authority (a celebrity, a professor, a politician, ...) that lacks the necessary expertise. A philosopher is not an authority on how buildings are demolished. Jay used an argument from expertise, which is perfectly acceptable.
I agree that I am not an expert on how buildings are demolished. I am, however, an expert on the use and meaning of such concepts as meaning, intention, and so on. My interlocutor, I dare say, was not, and then he accused me of using an argument from authority.
So, again: what's the difference?

The 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 5 [PDF] - al Qaeda Aims at the American Homeland:

[Note: In the following excerpt, KSM refers to Khalid Sheik Mohamed - a Kuwaiti terrorist financier who was the principal architect of the Sept 11th attacks and the man who originally pitched the "planes operation" to al Qaeda leadership in 1996.

Those looking for this reference in the print edition, see page 154 of that volume.

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In the progress of this discussion I shall endeavor to give a satisfactory answer to all the objections which shall have made their appearance, that may seem to have any claim to your attention.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1

And you would be wrong. extremism hasnt increased since 9/11, it is only more obvious. It is much easier to walk across a border with a bomb in your pack to attack an american than it is to try to cross an ocean to do the same thing. When you include the fact that the american media is paying attention now, it seems like there has been a big increase.

I knew there was a problem more than a decade ago when I was a signal intelligence analyst for the army. Extremism is not a new problem, and it has not gotten worse

What you say is basically a dressed-up version of what Spitfire said. I call it the official propaganda. Branding a group as terrorists, in the safe knowledge that from then on you understand their motives perfectly, strikes me as a tad easy.

I see Madrid and London as reactions to the wars; terrorism as a reaction to those wars, by groups quite possibly independent from al Quaeda.

Most conspiracists think that it doesn't have a purpose in that plan, and that that was a hijacking that went wrong, or was about to go wrong. Hence it was either blown up or shut down in order to prevent the uncovering of the conspiracy.

I wasn't talking of islamic extremism directed against the US only. And, why should I take your word for it here, against many other people's words?

Personally, I don't care about the philosophy of meaning or the hypothetical motives of Bin Ladin or Bush or anyone else. The physical evidence is absolutely overwhelming that hijacked airplanes were flown into WTC 1 and 2, the Pentagon, and the ground in PA.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

I'm afraid you haven't understood the point.

I understand it. I don't agree with it.

You're simply stating it as if it were self-evident fact. I, and apparently others, see your claim as self-evidently absurd. Perhaps we're just provincial engineers and scientists, but I don't see where the degree of abstraction required to consider your argument necessarily applies to the investigation of a real-world occurrence.

There is no truth beyond, or underlying, an attribution of motive.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Are you arguing that no truth can exist except it be an attribution? Or are you saying that an attribution of motive carries no truth? I agree with the latter, allowing of course that an attribution can be true but is not necessarily so. I disagree with the former, which I believe contradicts your earlier admission that absolute truth can exist.

This quite simply is what motives are.

Then your definition of motive differs from mine. I speak of "motive" as that which originates and acts internally in the case of an individual, and can be reached by consensus in the case of a group. In either instance I see this as fundamentally distinct from the attribution of motive, which would be the inference on the part of someone else.

...that it doesn't contradict my point above to claim that my knowledge of my motives is superior to other people's knowledge of them.

And if other people, with that inferior knowledge, wrongly attribute to you a motive that you know is wrong, then the attribution is in error. You cannot simultaneously argue that the individual's knowledge of motive is superior and also that an attribution of motive may not be wrong. The two are mutually exclusive.

A quite predictable putdown of my discipline, with your usual trump card of accountability.

And the predictable, empty dismissal. You, who have no appreciable accountability for the correctness of your statements, are questioning the findings of well-qualified professionals who do bear substantial personal responsibility for whether they get the right answer.

The notion of public accountability is based on the premise that people held accountable personally for decisions they make will exercise greater care in their reasoning. For you to dispute that being held accountable for whether your ideas are right or wrong makes you more desirous to employ correct reasoning is, frankly, astounding.

But the point was: how to establish that "a motive is not mine"?

In the case of the individual -- as you argued -- there is no way to establish it. If I argue that your motive in deploying some argument in some discussion is purely to save face, I have to acknowledge that there is no way I can know whether that was why you made it. I can, at best, note that the argument is consistent in various ways with previous examples of face-saving. I.e., I can make an inductive case, the inferences of which lead to that conclusion.

I cannot argue in that case that your motive is scrutable, and so I cannot argue that I have the basis to do any more than infer -- possibly wrongly -- about your motive.

In the case of groups -- as I argued -- there are various ways in which motives held officially by the group can be debated and thus rendered scrutable. You argued that actions need not derive from such explicitly conceded motives and may arise from the aggregation of uncoordinated individual motives. That's less applicable to the Pentagon's statement of motive, but certainly indisputable in the abstract.

I tend to view each of these cases as evidence of existence in se of a concept of motive that is independent of attribution -- be it scrutable or inscrutable. If motive can exist independent of attribution (and I argue it does) then attribution can be wrong. If attribution can be wrong, then merely stating an attribution is not sufficient to establish it as correct.

Further, I thoroughly decouple the testing of the inductive strength of an attribution from the investigation of its correctness. One is the vetting of an inference; the other is the ascertainment of a fact.

I know that you find expertise important, hence I mention it.

I do find expertise important where indicated. My comment addressed your selective employment of it. I am not saying that you don't have expertise nor that your expertise does not apply to this question. I'm saying that it's disingenuous of you now to invoke the authority of expertise when it benefits you, whereas previously in other discussions you dismissed the relevance of expertise when it disagreed with you. Are you prepared to continue all the other discussions now at an impasse because of your previous unwillingness to take expert statements at face value?

The subject you mention is, by the way, a different cup of tea altogether. The difference between psychology and philosophy of psychology.

Agreed. However, the former is generally more useful in real world investigation, which this is. Psychology is more applicable to the behavior of individuals prior, during, and after incidents and is generally more immediately helpful in discerning the human factors that may bear on the occurrence.

One may discuss motives and so on on a well informed basis as pertaining to eg. engineering, without necessarily being knowledgeable about how things like motives figure in our language.

We aren't concerned with how they fit into language, but whether they led to certain actions. You're trying to muddy up the waters so that you can have the kind of discussion you want -- a philosophical discussion. With all due respect, we're trying to reason about something that actually happened. That requires specific knowledge and experience, not the ability to argue endlessly what the definition of "is" is.

I'll concede the point to you, even though I am rather less optimistic about how easily dissent would come out.

I'm happy to agree to disagree on whether dissent would necessarily be visible. However, if we agree that two principal cases exist: (1) that the purported motive was a matter of group consent, or (2) that the purported motive was a tacet aggregate of individual opinions -- then we can make a case that an investigation of motive would at least search for evidence of such dissent. If effort is made that doesn't bear fruit, that is a different sort of credibility than if no effort is made.

I don't know, quite frankly, whether conspiracists have tried to discover any motives of the Pentagon.

Fair enough. I don't know of any attempts either, but I am not willing to assert that none exists. I thought that if any better argument existed than attribution of motive, you would more likely be aware of it than I, and that -- not the philosophy of attribution -- would be a more productive topic.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I have said that others may justifiedly disagree with the author about the meaning of his statements. This is because "what the author meant" is not a matter of fitting other's understanding of his statements to his internal mental state.

In other words, the author is the authority on his writing, but if someone else can offer proof to show his claims are wrong, then that authority can be lost. Otherwise without proof, speculation is just that, speculation.

Thank you for agreeing with us.

I call it the official propaganda.

Well according to the man who was OBL's best friend and brother-in-law, his objective is to force the Western Countries especially the US from Muslim lands and to remove their influence upon Muslim lands. Something tells me that a person that was best friends through the Afghanistan wouldn't be just "spouting the government line" especially since he's a Saudi and lives in Saudi. OBL believes that just as the Soviets were driven from Afghanistan, he can drive the US interests from the Middle East. He's a religious fanatic who believes in returning the death and destruction he believes the West has been responsible for and has supported since at least the first world war and in many instances longer.

terrorism as a reaction to those wars

No, terrorism has been around a lot longer than those wars. Remember the Embassy Bombings in Kenya? The USS Cole? The attacks on US Bases in Saudi? Somalia? Bali? The Muslim world has felt oppressed and under attack from the West since the Crusades. In WWI the major Muslim state, the Ottoman Empire was attacked and destroyed by the West for little reason (Well many assume it was oil.) Since then the actions in Palestine, the creation of Israel, attacks on Egypt, action in the Philippines and so on has all furthered that resentment and anger towards the West. We aren't reaping a whirlwind that started in 2001, it started back in 1401 and has been building since. Recent events have merely galvanised that resentment into unspeakable action. The recent publication of the Danish cartoons created more resentment and anger in the Muslim world than either war in Iraq or Afghanistan did. You have to realise that for the Muslim, his culture and his religion are one and the same. Unlike in the West were we have separated our culture and our religion, theirs are indivisibly bound together, and they deem an attack on one as an attack on the other. The introduction of Western morals, ideals and philosophies are all considered by the likes OBL and his radical ilk to be direct and vicious attacks on the Muslim way of life, and thus Islam itself and Allah.

Add to this the number of Muslims that have died apparently because of the foreign policies of western countries and you have a cauldron of super hot oil that has been waiting to burst into flames for years. All it needed was someone with a match. OBL has been holding that match and trying to light the fire for a war between the Muslim nations and the West for years, but until now he hasn't been totally successful.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

My interpretation of Brumsen's words is that he completely agrees with the "official story." By his own logic, I am correct in my interpretation, and therefore he does, even if he doesn't think he does. I am right because I am the observer; he is wrong because he's only the person who formulated the opinion I'm observing.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Indeed not. Have I said such a thing?

Yes, but not directly. When we talk of intent, you shift the discussion into one of meaning. Not everyone follows (or agrees with) that shift. So while we persist in talking about intent, you're flaying the red herring of meaning, in which context your arguments might make some sense. But when applied to the topic of intent, your argument sounds very much like the attributor of motive has a more authoritative notion than he who acted, which is patently absurd.

So let's stick with intent, not with meaning.

I have said that others may justifiedly disagree with the author about the meaning of his statements.

We're not talking about meaning. We're talking about intent. Let's say I wax amphibolistic and write,

"This morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas."

If I intend to communicate that I was wearing pajamas when I shot an elephant, then that's objectively and indisputably my intent. That intent exists independently of whether you interpret the statement as the elephant being shot while wearing my pajamas. (How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.)

The sentence itself is admittedly ambiguous. Since it contains a variety of possible meanings, you can certainly argue that any one meaning you understand is "correct". It is the meaning that will guide your response to the sentence. But if I, as the author, intended but one specific concept(regardless of any that may be attributed to it) then that intent remains wholly unchanged by any argument or inference you might wish to apply. A sentence may have many meanings, but it has only one intent. And where the intent of the author is the question, inference of meaning simply will not suffice.

I gave you a scenario in which inference inappropriately substitutes for observation. We have discussed the feasibility of observation in this case and agree that it is problematic. However, the scrutability of the conclusion imposes a burden of proof. We can certainly cite many cases in which errors of meaning and interpretation have unpleasant consequences. However, if we agree that intent is separate from belief of intent, then clearly the attributor bears responsibility for the correctness of his inference.

Lest we rise to high into the ethereal, let us remind ourselves what we're talking about. We're talking about people claiming that the Pentagon or Pentagon people withheld the video either to hide incriminating evidence or to make patsies out of the conspiracy theorists. All we want to know is how they think they know that. If they can produce some colonel who says he was in on the discussions, or some photocopied page from someone's notes where such a cover was deliberated, that would be evidence of such an intent as, let's say, mens rea. Even a whistle-blower would work. But if, on the other hand, the best they can do is show us a line of inference that ends at such a conclusion, we have every right to question whether that has any value.

I agree that I am not an expert on how buildings are demolished.

And we recognized that you are not. However you refused at the time to accept that your arguments (and other arguments whose plausibility you defended without necessarily subscribing to them) relating to structural performance were properly refuted by people who did have the necessary expertise. Your justification in doing so was precisely that expertise was not relevant. See below.

I am, however, an expert on the use and meaning of such concepts as meaning, intention, and so on.

Accepted. But there is considerable skepticism that any of that expertise is helpful here. Real investigations take a more pragmatic approach than it seems arises from your expertise. We don't take a theoretically unjustifiable approach, just one that doesn't, for example, deny that such a thing as a "fact" exists.

I can understand that you may want to turn this into an esoteric philosophical discussion because that's what you've spent your whole life doing, but the people who are trying to get to the bottom of this aren't really interested in abstract sophistry. There are people like me who've spent our whole lives figuring out what went wrong with stuff, and then taking moral and legal responsibility for whether we're right or wrong. In that context, saying that why you think someone did something is equivalent to why he really did it is patently absurd. It may be a provincial way of thinking about it in your estimation, but it's the context in which real investigations are done.

If you don't like it, do your own accident investigations according to your own methodology, and then sign on the dotted line that you are responsible for their correctness.

...then he accused me of using an argument from authority.

No, I accused you of using a proper argument from authority when you had previously denied that right to others. If you are interested in a fair and constructive discussion, why would you demand that others have to play by rules that don't apply to you? Isn't that more consistent with someone just trying to "win" regardless of the truth?

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