🚀 go-pugleaf

Todd Andrews (tandrews@deltanet.com) wrote:
: Ad Hominem on the way:
: 
: > David W. Fenton
: > New York University
: > dfenton@bway.net | dwf4930@is2.nyu.edu
: > http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
: 
: This is a man, a perennial student, who has unfortunately been educated 
: beyond his common sense.

If yours is the standard of common sense, I'll just tell you right off
that I never had any of that kind in the first place.

For one who has continually found ad hominem attacks where there aren't
any, it seems to me that you are awfully willing to resort to them
yourself. The message to which you responded (and deleted the text) was
this:

--------------------------------------------
R. Carruth (rcarruth@deltanet.com) wrote:
: David W. Fenton wrote:
: > Is deltanet.com a subsidiary of AOL?
:
: Poor attempt at humor.
:
: It is infuriating to you that not all intelligent, educated people agree
with your views, isn't it?

Well, since you asked, no it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

What does that have to do with you?
--------------------------------------------

I fail to understand how anyone who espouses the positions you and "R. 
Carruth" espouse, and then attempts to support them with the most
illogical of "arguments" can make any claim either to intelligence or
education. 

In any case, my education has nothing whatsoever to do with the
discussion, for your words and "arguments" fail or succeed on their own
merits (or lack thereof), regardless of the intelligence or education of
your opponents. 

Your appeal to "common sense" is an abdication of any responsibility
whatsoever to abide by accepted rules of debate. Discourse is not possible
if it is not based on reason. "Common sense" is by definition not subject
to objective verification, and cannot, therefore, be used as evidence in
supporting your case, unless it can be shown that "common sense" has a
rational basis outside itself. 

Every time you appeal to "common sense" you are admitting, loud and clear,
"I've lost this argument." 

David W. Fenton
New York University
dfenton@bway.net | dwf4930@is2.nyu.edu
http://www.bway.net/~dfenton