Poetry and a Heated Debate

Axiologist, you misunderstand me. Did I say anything against poetry ? Just read me again. I said others would (I meant LP; and that they would use the word 'nonsense'). The fact is that the word 'poetry' was already used in this debate, by Doctor(Logic), in the following manner (comment to post 'from science to language') :

All other Natural Language messages are considered poetry, that is, they do not describe, request information or command action relating to verfiable facts. Poetry could be nonsense, but it might also be used to stimulate an emotional response. For example, a song with nonsensical lyrics would fall into this category because it is intended only to stimulate emotional responses.The task of philosophy is to identify those natural language messages that are complete. It is my contention that metaphysical messages are all poetic.

This statement is not an attack on poetry, and I do not disagree with it either. When I said that we cannot fully grasp our own beliefs and thus that the best option is to do philosophy in a therapeutic, Wittgensteinian, sense, I am in full agreement with 'philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry'.

Now, what I do find harmful is to do something while pretending to be doing another. You mentioned psychopathologists saying that the terrorists are not mentally ill but 'misguided'. But WHO misled them if not people who were precisely doing that. My charge against LP is that it is doning the cloak of science while, in fact, doing something that some would call 'poetry', others 'metaphysics', and still others 'religion'. My own mention of poetry occured in a context where we were supposed to be doing thechnical philosophy. I do not like thechnical philosophy very much because I feel it leads nowhere, and that was what I was trying to show. But one thing is for sure. It is that technical philosophy is not poetry. LP and Doctor(Logic) claim that very forcefully. So do not say 'nature is not contradictory' while doing technical philosophy, unless you want to mislead people !

Regarding Humpty Dumpty and 'who is to be master'. Well, yes, I think this is the question that matter. Ou beliefs are our masters. So it matters what beliefs we accept to lord it over us. I think it is now quite clear from this debate that people with the wrong sort of beliefs may kill, maim or be driven to madness. Actually I know one who did, and who was very close to me. I believe more people will go down that road if Doctor(Logic) wins. So I fight him. You may think this is rather simplistic. Well I believe things that matter need not be complicated. When you see someone being violent with an other, you feel it is your duty to intervene. I think that it is the same when you see someone saying things which may confuse people into the kind of possible consequences we are talking about here.

I said we fight and this is bound to affraid some. But notice we fight with words only, and the more we fight that way, the less likely it is we might end up fighting with other means. That is the whole point of democracy. Move the fight off the battlefield and into the assembly. Let them yell at each other so that, when they have done so to their heart's content, they will go back to the pub, tired but happy, to drink and call each other 'friend' again.