{"id":2096,"date":"2008-02-06T08:37:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T08:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=2096"},"modified":"2008-02-06T08:37:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-06T08:37:00","slug":"reasonable-atheism-4-two-quotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=2096","title":{"rendered":"Reasonable atheism (4): two quotations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know who said this (it came to me via Matt Kundert on the MoQ list) but I think it is excellent:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The &#8216;third rate&#8217; critic attacks the original thinker on the basis of the rhetorical consequences of his thought and defends the status quo against the corrupting effects of the philosopher&#8217;s rhetoric. &#8216;Second rate&#8217; critics defend the same received wisdom by semantic analyses of the thinker which highlight ambiguities and vagueness in his terms and arguments. But &#8216;first rate&#8217; critics &#8220;delight in the originality of those they criticise&#8230;; they attack an optimal version of the philosopher&#8217;s position&#8211;one in which the holes in the argument have been plugged or politely ignored.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The second one, inevitably, is from Wittgenstein:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Even to have expressed a false thought boldly and clearly is already to have gained a great deal.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what I&#8217;m aiming for &#8211; to express thoughts boldly and clearly, and invite first-rate critical responses.<br \/><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know who said this (it came to me via Matt Kundert on the MoQ list) but I think it is excellent: &#8220;The &#8216;third rate&#8217; critic attacks the original thinker on the basis of the rhetorical consequences of his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=2096\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-philosophy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-xO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}