On 29/01/2008, Kurt Maxwell Weber kmw@kurtweber.us wrote:
On Tuesday 29 January 2008 02:41, you wrote:
Consistency is the something-or-other of foolish minds, as the saying goes. We make these rules for ourselves; they don't have to be consistent
Way to completely misinterpret Thoreau's dictum.
He wasn't referring to logical consistency--in fact, he understood that LOGICAL consistency was essential.
Rather, he was talking about "consistency" in the sense of a stubborn refusal to change one's mind in the face of superior evidence or arguments.
Please, from now on make sure you actually understand what people mean when they say something before you invoke it to support your own arguments.
Well, I was invoking it as a handy bon mot, because, you know, that's what we do with nice flip phrases from the common cultural heritage when we are debating unrelated things. It's not being "invoked as support"; if it was, I'd have actually explained why I was invoking it, and probably named the grand authority, rather than saying "as the saying goes" and moving on.
Anyhow, I hate to be snotty in response to a snotty email, but I think you might find you seem a lot more erudite if you attribute it to Emerson, not to Thoreau...
Regardless, It seems to me perfectly reasonable to invoke that as an argument against the slavish worship of Everything Must Be Just So, Just Because (and god knows we have enough trouble with people trying to insist on precedent as a guiding principle anyway...) Deviate from our "past act" when it suits us to? That's just the issue here.