[WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

Fri Apr 15 05:17:15 UTC 2005

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 08:45:27PM +0100, David 'DJ' Hedley wrote:
> > Absolutely not.  He specifically said that he "recognized" that people
> > were doing something with the deliberate intention of breaching policy.  I
> > see no room for misinterpretation.   Having no evidence to show, it seems
> > to me that the assumption of bad faith , and a massive, obvious one at
> > that, is on his part.  I'm revolted by this.  I see no apology.  I see no
> > withdrawal, only weaseling and wriggling.  A disgusting accusstion,
> > disgusting behavior in continuing with it.  He has now confirmed his
> > accusation of bad faith against a specific, named editor.
> 
> Kevin inadvertetly made a paralipsis,
> http://www.wordsmith.org/words/paralipsis.html. A paralipsis is
> basically a way of trying to state something without having to back it
> up. It is another rhethorical trick that is very hard to counter
> because the speaker makes sure it is not he who is stating it.
> 
> "I've come to the realization that
> people are searching out nude pictures to put in the 'pedia. They are
> looking
> to stir up trouble, mostly to make a point."
> 
> This is a bad paralipsis that Tony rightly objected to. Kevin IS
> definitely asserting a fact here. He could have gotten away with it by
> instead of saying "I've come to the realization that..." say "I have a
> feeling that..." or "Someone told me that..." or "I've heard that..."
> or "It might be that..." If he would have phrased his paralipsis like
> that, Tony would probably appear as a petty troublemaker that
> questions something unessential. Still, since noone except Tony has
> opposed Kevin's statement, and people have questioned Tony's motives
> for "nitpicking," it shows how effective this rhethorical trick is.
> Tony has lost, but atleast he got people to question the validity of
> Kevin's statement.

It's pretty clear that Kevin's statement isn't factually supportable
with evidence at hand, but that doesn't change the fact that what could
easily be a mere bit of sloppy phrasing was instead treated by Tony as a
deliberate and specific accusatory attack.  As I've tried to convey,
more than once, I don't think that Kevin's statement provides a very
realistic impression of events at hand, the evidence to support Tony's
accusations of bad faith on Kevin's part is simply lacking.

I'm not even sure Kevin's statement strictly qualifies as a paralepsis
(at least, not without some caveats), whereas your misdirection of the
attention of the reader away from Tony's assumptions of bad faith are
more likely to be definable as paralepses.  In particular, you present
as a given the notion that Tony's statements constitute an objection to
the use of paralepsis when, in fact, they simply accuse Kevin of making
wild accusations.  What Kevin actually did is 1) fail to identify a
difference between inference and deduction, and 2) overgeneralize,
unless Kevin does indeed have some kind of statistical "proof" of the
factual accuracy of his statements (a patently ludicrous idea, in my
opinion).  Anything else that either you or Tony has said about Kevin's
perfidies seems to this reader at least to be nothing but unfounded
speculation.

Note: To satisfy the requirements of a paralepsis, Kevin's statements
would have to include an apparently primary assertion and the
rhetorically obfuscated assertion, where the former acts to obscure the
latter, as the latter is embedded within a downplaying bit of phrasing.
Contrary to your claim that Kevin's statements satisfy the terms of a
paralepsis, they in fact make central the point you seem to think obscured
by trickery.  I agree that there is something wrong with Kevin's
statements, but (assuming good faith, among other reasons) neither your
interpretation of what is wrong nor Tony's seems a likely accurate
description of the actual problem.

This is getting long-winded.  I'll cut it short.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]