Re: Captain Flint's travels - overcooked?


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Posted by Jock on December 01, 2006 at 11:43:34 from 87.105.81.146 user Jock.

In Reply to: Re: Captain Flint's travels - overcooked? posted by John Lambert on December 01, 2006 at 08:34:59:

The idea that a group of people can get together arrive at the truth
by debate is the Hegelian dialectic. It's a pretty shaky way to discover
anything...

The idea that you can arrive at truth by debate is much older than Hegel.
In fact, it's as old as Philosophy itself. Plato describes how Socrates used
to go around asking questions and then on receiving answers challenging
them (a bit like Peter H!) and that was over 2,000 years before Hegel was
born.

We do debate matters in the external world on TarBoard and at its best the
debate can be educational and informative. Sometimes there is no single
answer, witness the debate about the correct spelling of Kanchenjunga
- it depends on how you define "correct spelling". Sometimes the subject
is such that we can be more definitive. It is true that AR had copies
of the Dr Doolittle books in his library.

With regard to AR's virtual world, the various hypotheses that come up
on TarBoard, such as whether the GA had a financial stake in Beckfoot or
which countries CF travelled to, can be tested for their coherence (or lack
thereof) to the rest of the stories.

If this provides me with an opportunity to re-read or even sometimes
re-interpret passages that I once skipped over as a child then that's a
good enough reason for doing so for me!


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