My AmazonReview of "The Reasonable Woman," allegedly by Wendy McElroy

[George H. Smith]

Innocent until proven guilty I say.

Phil is, not Bertrand. Why? Bertrand hasn't told us who he is. He's just a name, likely made up.

--Brant

Likely? "Bertrand Russ" -- more than likely, I would say.

One thing that counts against the Probably Phil theory is the nick. I'm sure Phil shares the obligatory O'ist dislike of Russell, so the nick doesn't strike me as something he would choose.

Ghs

[Selene]

Folks:

Before I shoot myself in the temple or hang myself, can someone possibly explain how this thread, somehow, became about Phil?

Good grief.

Yes, it is possible, "but", my gut just tells me that it makes no sense for him to approach OL this way.

Adam

[George H. Smith]

Folks:

Before I shoot myself in the temple or hang myself, can someone possibly explain how this thread, somehow, became about Phil?

Good grief.

Yes, it is possible, "but", my gut just tells me that it makes no sense for him to approach OL this way.

Adam

Correction: Yes, it is possible. But! My gut just tells me that it makes no sense for him to approach OL this way.

Talk about an inside joke.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

Folks:

Before I shoot myself in the temple or hang myself, can someone possibly explain how this thread, somehow, became about Phil?

Good grief.

Yes, it is possible, "but", my gut just tells me that it makes no sense for him to approach OL this way.

Adam

Correction: Yes, it is possible. But! My gut just tells me that it makes no sense for him to approach OL this way.

Talk about an inside joke.

Ghs

I get the joke! I get the joke!

--Brant

insider

[caroljane]

Brant has plagiarized the post I was just going to write. I am considering legal action.

[Brant Gaede]

Innocent until proven guilty I say.

Phil is, not Bertrand. Why? Bertrand hasn't told us who he is. He's just a name, likely made up.

--Brant

Likely? "Bertrand Russ" -- more than likely, I would say.

One thing that counts against the Probably Phil theory is the nick. I'm sure Phil shares the obligatory O'ist dislike of Russell, so the nick doesn't strike me as something he would choose.

Ghs

Isn't Phil some kinda math guy? Russell started out as a math guy.

I found a Bertrand Russ who lives in Louisiana.

The irony of this thread turning into "all about Phil" even if he isn't Bertrand, especially if he isn't, is delicious. Phil has never stopped reading OL since he stopped posting and he's got to be enjoying this even if he is Bertrand.

--Brant

relief for Wendy

[George H. Smith]

Folks:

Before I shoot myself in the temple or hang myself, can someone possibly explain how this thread, somehow, became about Phil?

Good grief.

Yes, it is possible, "but", my gut just tells me that it makes no sense for him to approach OL this way.

Adam

Correction: Yes, it is possible. But! My gut just tells me that it makes no sense for him to approach OL this way.

Talk about an inside joke.

Ghs

I get the joke! I get the joke!

--Brant

insider

After reading over 550 posts on this thread, you had better get the joke. But! I could be wrong.

[Brant Gaede]

Brant has plagiarized the post I was just going to write. I am considering legal action.

But I get the joke beneath the joke--it's jokes all the way down.

--Brant

you and Wendy have something in common

[caroljane]

Brant has plagiarized the post I was just going to write. I am considering legal action.

But I get the joke beneath the joke--it's jokes all the way down.

--Brant

you and Wendy have something in common

Oh, all us Canadian gals are basically the same.

[Brant Gaede]

Folks:

Before I shoot myself in the temple or hang myself, can someone possibly explain how this thread, somehow, became about Phil?

Good grief.

Yes, it is possible, "but", my gut just tells me that it makes no sense for him to approach OL this way.

Adam

Correction: Yes, it is possible. But! My gut just tells me that it makes no sense for him to approach OL this way.

Talk about an inside joke.

Ghs

I get the joke! I get the joke!

--Brant

insider

After reading over 550 posts on this thread, you had better get the joke. But! I could be wrong.

But! It's not funny.

--Brant

get it?--it is funny!

[George H. Smith]

TWO TIDBITS

While reading some parts of TRW last night, I happened across a couple amusing tidbits. I didn't note the page numbers of these stories, but they are relatively insignificant when compared to the plagiarism. They are revealing, however.

1. Wendy writes about a "friend" who coined the term "creative evasion" to explain a method of getting things done. Well, I was that "friend." I coined the term in college and used it frequently thereafter, and I based some of my FOR material on it -- which Wendy plagiarized, of course. But the interesting thing is that Wendy could not bring herself, once again, to mention my name or give me credit for anything, however minor, beyond the one general credit I have talked about before.

2. In Chapter 6, Books and Other Good Friends, Wendy once again engages in shameless and massive plagiarism. I used to give a lot of tips to students in FOR classes about how to approach and use books, and I turned this into a nifty little "after hours" talk for IHS summer seminars, which I lectured at for 16 years. Of course, Wendy lifted this material wholesale without giving me any credit.

Nothing new here; just business as usual.

Anyway, at some point Wendy -- probably in her, i.e., my, discussion of marginalia -- tells this story: While in Murray Rothbard's apartment in New York, she was looking through one of his books, and she noticed some scribbling in a margin. She couldn't make it out at first, but after a while she figured out that Murray had written "atta boy!!"

Here is the true story, which I often used to tell to friends:

While Wendy and I were attending a Libertarian Scholars Conference in NYC (c. 1978), we were invited over to Murray's apartment. While looking through Murray's impressive collection of books, I noticed that he had two copies of Elie Halevy's book, Thomas Hodgskin.

I was a huge fan of Thomas Hodgskin (and still am), and this book was out of print and difficult to find. Moreover, Halevy was a great historian of classical liberalism, so this was a choice item for me. I had only seen a copy in the UCLA Research Library before this.

As I drooled over one of the copies, I asked Murray if he would be willing to sell it to me, given that he had another copy. Murray generously told me to take it as a gift.

The bonus was that Murray had written quite a lot in the margins of this book, and, after returning to my home in Hollywood, I went through each one. I could read them all except one cryptic bit of scribbling. I looked at it again and again over a period of weeks, but I still couldn't figure out what it said. Then, a few months later, it dawned on me. Murray had written "atta boy! -- an expression he often used when he liked something.

I thought this story was very amusing, because it was so characteristic of Murray, and I loved to tell it to friends. This is what makes Wendy's appropriation of the story so sad. Couldn't she at least have left me one of my all-time favorite anecdotes about Murray without stealing that, too?

I sometimes feel like my whole life was stolen by Wendy for inclusion in TRW. After nearly 13 years, this stuff still makes me want to throw up.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Wendy's Motive

I now want to continue the story that I began earlier, i.e., the story about how intensely personal Wendy's plagiarism was. And I want to begin this continuation by referring to my previous post, specifically, the Rothbard "atta boy" story.

Over the past few months, I have gotten very hardened about this whole affair, and this has enabled me to read TRW more carefully than I did in 1998, to pay more attention to psychological details and nuances than I did in 1998, and to write about these things now. But writing about the "atta boy" story cut me to the quick. A painful knot formed in my stomach while writing it, so I took my dog for a walk, hoping it would go away. But it is still there.

There is something very disturbing about the "atta boy" story. I would go so far as to call it pathological. Wendy could have easily made her point about that story without transferring it from me to her. That would have been no big deal, and she could have continued to plagiarize to her heart's content.

So why did Wendy make the changes that left me out of the picture and absorbed me into her, so to speak? Why did she appropriate, not my writing, but one of my personal experiences? As I said, there is something positively pathological here.

Plagiarism can be explained in various ways, but Wendy's appropriation of the "atta boy" story illustrates, better than her plagiarism of the 200 pages of my FOR transcript, that something highly unusual was going on while she was writing TRW. I don't know if I can explain this, or even give a plausible speculation, much less a plausible theory, but I can tell how all this makes me feel. And it is pretty damned creepy.

I feel like one of the victims portrayed in the classic B movie The Body Snatchers. I feel as if my mind was transferred to another body, via TRW, in almost every conceivable respect. Wendy expropriated far more than 200 pages of my words; she also appropriated to herself my way of thinking and many of my personal experiences -- in short, my very being. And the new creature has the same cold and lifeless qualities of the aliens that grew from those pods in the movie.

Okay, I know this is getting a little weird, so I'm going to take a break before I sink even deeper into this psychological quicksand.

To be continued. I need to see if I can untie that knot.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Wendy's Motive 2

The Tumbleweed Years

The problem with speculating about Wendy's motive is that she is an extraordinarily complex person. I am not exaggerating when I say that she has the most complex psychology of any person, female or male, that I have ever met, bar none.

By no means is this a criticism. On the contrary, I found Wendy's psychology fascinating and very appealing, even if it did sometimes keep me off-balance.

For example: I recall that Wendy and I were sitting in our living room once, and Wendy said something out of the blue that was related to a conversation we had had at least a year earlier. We had never talked about that conversation during the intervening year, and Wendy didn't set a context. She simply picked up where we had left off, as if our conversation had taken place five minutes before.

After listening to this extraordinary continuation of a conversation from a year earlier, I said to Wendy: "If someone put a rat in the middle of your brain, it wouldn't be able to find its way out."

Wendy replied, quickly and innocently, "Thank you." She had taken my remark as a compliment -- and, to be honest, I meant it as one, more or less.

Because of the amazing complexity of Wendy's mind, it is necessary for me to break it down into various parts. The part I wish to discuss here was her sense of innocence.

Not long after we moved in together, Wendy and I drove from Hollywood to Tucson. I wanted her to meet my mother and my friends from college. Plus Wendy had never been in the "Old West," and she really wanted to see it.

As we approached the outskirts of Tucson, we passed a large vacant lot with a high wire fence around it. Inside the fence were many dozens, perhaps hundreds, of tumbleweeds that had gotten trapped. I remember our conversation very well. It went like this:

"Oh, look, George -- tumbleweeds!"

"Yeah, that's a tumbleweed ranch."

"A tumbleweed ranch?"

"Yeah, that's where they grow and harvest tumbleweeds."

"Noooo...it's not. They don't grow tumbleweeds."

"Of course they do. You don't think tumbleweeds grow just anywhere, do you? There is no water in the desert, so they can't grow wild. They are grown on tumbleweed ranches. Didn't you know that?"

"Uh, are you kidding me?

"No. Tucson is the tumbleweed ranch capital of the word. It is a major industry here, because they are used in a lot in movies. They are grown here and then shipped to movie sets all over the world."

At this point Wendy believed me and got very excited. Later that day, after we met with some friends of mine, one of them asked Wendy how she liked Tucson. She replied that she hadn't seen much of it yet, but that she really liked the tumbleweed ranch we had passed.

There were some strange looks on the faces of those veteran Tucsonians, as I doubled over in laughter. I quickly explained my joke, and Wendy took it very good humor.

I mention this story because this innocence was a major aspect of Wendy's personality, at least for the first few years of our relationship. And to a certain extent she always retained it, even as she became much more sophisticated and even cynical.

Okay, that was one was facet of Wendy's psychology. One down, and 3,635 to go. (Just kidding. }

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

Uh, George. Tucson used to have quite a few tumbleweed ranches. I think they're all gone now. Same for the dude ranches and TB sanitoriums.

--Brant

misses the dust devils

[George H. Smith]

Uh, George. Tucson used to have quite a few tumbleweed ranches. I think they're all gone now. Same for the dude ranches and TB sanitoriums.

--Brant

misses the dust devils

Sure it did, Brant.

Ghs

[Selene]

Tumbleweed Compadre Ranch

a 501c3, non-profit organization

serving developmentally disabled adults

[Brant Gaede]

Tumbleweed Compadre Ranch

a 501c3, non-profit organization

serving developmentally disabled adults

That brings back a lot of memories, Adam.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

Wendy's Motive 3

After thinking things over and getting some sleep, I realized that I was going down a path once again that I shouldn't go down, one that could lead me to engage in endless and possibly irrelevant speculation. I am therefore going to take another path, one grounded heavily in the text of TRW.

In my recent reading of TRW, as I have said before, I noticed things that escaped me in 1998. At that time I was interested only in the parallel passages, which are obvious and easy to spot. More recently, however, I noticed a number of more subtle things.

Consider this paragraph (TRW 142). Once again, I have highlighted some sigificant parts::

The next two chapters are devoted to examining a unique intellectual therapy group created by the philosopher George Smith, in which I was fortunate enough to participate. I vividly remember some of the exercises the groups members conducted to come to grips with their intellectual problems.

In fact, I taught the FOR classes, and I "conducted" the exercises. The "group" didn't "conduct" anything.

This type of wording -- a veritable Randian nightmare -- recurs throughout Wendy's description of my FOR groups, which continues for two chapters. (These are titled "Intellectual Therapy" and "Forming an Intellectual Therapy Group.") Wendy simply dropped me out of the picture. For all my work over seven years, I didn't even merit the status of a pronoun anywhere in TRW. Later, when Wendy speaks of a fictitious "facilitator," she uses the pronoun "she." Thus, while plagiarizing my work, Wendy proceeded to castrate me as well.

Recall two additional points I made in a previous post:

First, other than her mention of me above, my name is never mentioned by Wendy in TRW, even though the next 30 pages are devoted to describing the mechanics of my FOR classes in meticulous detail

Second, nowhere in those 30 pages, or anywhere else in TRW, are my classes mentioned by name, The Fundamentals of Reasoning.

Now, let's continue with the passage I quoted above:

To a large extent, these exercises were lifted and adapted from standard psychotherapy, especially from the biocentric therapy of Nathaniel Branden (as expressed in Breaking Free and The Disowned Self) and the rational emotive therapy of Albert Ellis. Both psychologists place special stress upon the crucial role your irrational beliefs play in causing your own psychological problems.

Although this passage contains an element of truth, it is also misleading. It is misleading partly because Wendy characterizes my FOR classes (without naming them) as a type of "therapy," and I never called them this. Indeed, I resent the fact that Wendy characterizes them in this way in TRW. The exercises to which she refers played a minor role, and to the extent that I "lifted and adapted from standard psychotherapy," I always acknowledged the source of the techniques I was using.

The only thing I "lifted and adapted" from NB was his sentence-completion technique. I used this very sparingly: typically I used it only in the first class and only for a few rounds, for the purpose of loosening people up.

My favorite sentence to-be-completed, which I presented early in the first class, was: If I were to write a book, the title would be...I then followed up with: If I were to write another book, the title would be....

This was normally it. I might have used another sentence or so from time to time, but the purpose of the exercise was not to delve into some deep or significant psychological issues, as suggested by Wendy's use of the term "therapy." The light and brief If I were to write a book... exercise sometimes yielded amusing results, and the ensuing laughter made people more relaxed and got them talking. This was merely a warm-up, not an integral part of my classes.

(I vividily recall a woman who said: "If I were to write a book, the title would be All About Me." Second round: "If I were to write a book, the title would be All About Me, Volume Two.)

So what is the significance of all this? Why have I called attention to Wendy's over-therapization (to coin a word) of my FOR classes? Simply this:

I always began my FOR classes with an informal philosophical talk (while remaining seated) that lasted around 30 minutes (out of a 2 hour class). And my talks always contained substantial intellectual content, e.g., about the nature of knowledge and certainty. (Recall the parallel passages about Karl Popper; those were from one of these mini-lectures.) I then applied the philosophical points to more practical concerns and attempted to show participants how philosophy could be applied to their lives and help them become more confident intellectually. I then encouraged comments, and a discussion ensued about the talk I had given.

These talks and discussions about "practical philosophy" constituted a major part of my FOR classes, and Wendy does cover this feature in TRW. But, in plagiarizing my talks wholesale throughout TRW, Wendy does not present them as essential to my FOR classes or, indeed, as part of my classes at all. Rather, she simply presents her plagiarized versions of my FOR talks as her ideas about philosophy, without connecting them to my classses at at all.

To summarize so far:

After mentioning my name in TRW only once, and while never mentioning "The Fundamentals of Reasoning," Wendy devotes 30 pages to describing the methods I used (e.g., the intellectual journal) while never pointing out that my so-called "intellectual therapy groups" were grounded in a substantial amount of philosophy, and that that focus on philosophy was the core of my FOR classes.

By dropping the intellectual content from her account of my groups, and by focusing instead on the exercises, Wendy was able to forge a chapter titled "Forming an Intellectual Therapy Group. This presents a plan for a self-help "intellectual therapy" group run by a "facilitator."

I was a teacher, not a "facilitator," and my FOR classes were so successful precisely because I focused on philosophical substance and never permitted them to degenerate into the kind of touchy-feely, self-indulgent gab sessions that were popular during the 1970s and of which Wendy was especially fond.

Wendy's over-emphasis on the psychological features of my FOR classes faciliated her plagiarism, because it enabled her to copy, nearly word for word, my accounts of the techniques I used, while crediting them to someone else. Here is a good example:

In "Forming an Intellectual Therapy Group," Wendy plagiarizes a bunch -- a huge bunch -- of material from my FOR transcripts. But in the second paragraph, she writes:

In a chapter entitled "Teaching Unconditional Self-Acceptance," Windy Dryden's book Inquiries in Rational-Emotive Therapy offers a virtual blueprint for establishing what she terms a "Self-Acceptance Group" which is organized along Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) principles. The RET groups are remarkably similar to the intellectual therapy (IT) ones with which I was involved years ago; indeed, the IT groups in which I assisted may well have been originally modeled upon them.

There are a number of things that need to be said about this astonishing passage -- for example, note how Wendy uses "IT" (a fictitious label) instead of "FOR" -- indeed, so many things that I will need to pick this subject up in a subsequent post.

To be continued....

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

In "Forming an Intellectual Therapy Group," Wendy plagiarizes a bunch -- a huge bunch -- of material from my FOR transcripts. But in the second paragraph, she writes:

In a chapter entitled "Teaching Unconditional Self-Acceptance," Windy Dryden's book Inquiries in Rational-Emotive Therapy offers a virtual blueprint for establishing what she terms a "Self-Acceptance Group" which is organized along Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) principles. The RET groups are remarkably similar to the intellectual therapy (IT) ones with which I was involved years ago; indeed, the IT groups in which I assisted may well have been originally modeled upon them.

There are a number of things that need to be said about this astonishing passage -- for example, note how Wendy uses "IT" (a fictitious label) instead of "FOR" -- indeed, so many things that I will need to pick this subject up in a subsequent post.

To be continued....

Ghs

In point of fact, I never read the book to which Wendy refers, and to this day I have no idea who Windy Dryden is.

I had read a far amount of Albert Ellis, but I used his ideas very selectively, and I had no idea how RET therapy groups were typically conducted, having never participated in one or read a book on the subject.

I don't believe I mentioned Ellis very often in my FOR classes, since I didn't agree with many of his ideas, but I did refer to him more in another class I gave during the same period. Titled "Principles, Purpose, and Practice" (PPP), this class had a much heavier psychological emphasis than FOR ever did. I was never very happy with the results of PPP, however, so I only gave it a few times. I also taught an advanced version of FOR, which I called FOR II.

A mixture of all three classes were included in my FOR transcripts, and Wendy plagiarized from all three indiscriminately.

After mentioning Windy Dryden's book, Wendy continues with her massive plagiarism from my FOR transcripts. So why did Wendy mention Windy -- I love this! -- at all? What was the point? I mean, who cares if some unnamed "intellectual therapy" group that Wendy participated in years ago was actually based on RET groups?

This is not true, btw. In the same chapter we are considering here, Wendy attempts to link my "intellectual journal" to something used in RET groups. In fact, the major influence on me was Ira Progoff's book, At a Journal Workshop: Writing to Access the Power of the Unconscious and Evoke Creative Ability . I purchased a copy of this popular book immediately after it was first published in 1975 -- the same year I started my FOR classes -- and it had a substantial influence on my conception of an intellectual journal.

It is strange, is it not, that Wendy, who in 1998 claimed to be the co-creator and co-developer of FOR, nowhere mentions Progoff in TRW. It seems a co-creator of FOR had no clue about a major source of the intellectual journal that she writes so extensively about in TRW. Instead, Wendy pulls a book by Windy out of her ass and speculates that the "IT groups in which I assisted "may well have been originally modeled upon them," i.e., the RET therapy groups originated by Albert Ellis, which I knew nothing about. And what about the "may"? Wouldn't a co-creator and co-developer of FOR know for sure? Blank out.

In his recent and disastrous hit and run raid on OL, Brad R., Wendy's hubby, inadvertently reinforced my point by claiming that after Wendy began researching TRW in 1994, she discovered many of the sources that I had supposedly relied upon. As I pointed out in my response, however, if Wendy had co-created and co-developed FOR, wouldn't she have already known all this stuff? I taught FOR classes from 1975 to 1982, and Wendy began work on TRW in 1994. Thus it apparently took a supposed co-creator and co-developer of my FOR classes many years to discover the sources we had supposedly used.

What a mess Wendy made of her excuses over the years. Then, after she sent the noble knight Clueless Brad to defend her honor, he only managed to fuck things up worse by providing eyewitness testimony that Wendy did not in fact co-create and co-develop FOR.

Anyway, I need to tie the preceding material to my theory of Wendy's motive (or motives) for plagiarism, and I shall do this in my next post.

Ghs

[Selene]

Tumbleweed Compadre Ranch

That brings back a lot of memories, Adam.

--Brant

Brant:

How so?

And I hope they were good ones...

Adam

[George H. Smith]

Tumbleweed Compadre Ranch

That brings back a lot of memories, Adam.

--Brant

Brant:

How so?

And I hope they were good ones...

Adam

"Tumbleweed Compadre Ranch" sounds like the name of a gay cowboy bar.

[Selene]

Tumbleweed Compadre Ranch

That brings back a lot of memories, Adam.

--Brant

Brant:

How so?

And I hope they were good ones...

Adam

"Tumbleweed Compadre Ranch" sounds like the name of a gay cowboy bar.

Yep. And I thought it was particularly funny since the horses looked like they were ready to consummate their "relationship" lol.

[George H. Smith]

Anyway, I need to tie the preceding material to my theory of Wendy's motive (or motives) for plagiarism, and I shall do this in my next post.

Ghs

I've been spending more time writing posts than I can afford to spend, so rather than engage in elaborate speculation about Wendy's motives for plagiarizing so flagrantly and so massively from my FOR transcripts, I want to present the basic paradox, as I see it. Only if you can resolve this paradox can you hope to understand the motive that pertains to me personally. This is where the information in my posts from earlier today becomes relevant.

Here is the paradox:

On the one hand, Wendy's plagiarism is as massive and flagrant as plagiarism can possibly be. It therefore seems that she made no effort to conceal her plagiarism.

On the other hand --as illustrated by my recent posts (there is much more)-- Wendy took great care, when it came to details, to conceal her plagiarism. She mentions my name only once; she never mentions "Fundamentals of Reasoning" or "FOR" by name, referring instead to an "intellectual therapy" group, which she abbreviates "IT"; she mentions other writers as possible sources for my ideas (again, without mentioning my name), etc. In short, in these and other areas, Wendy was meticulous in covering her plagiaristic tracks.

So what explains this apparent paradox? If Wendy was so concerned about covering her tracks, then why didn't she spend a lot more time rewriting my FOR transcripts rather than quoting them verbatim, or nearly verbatim? This would have been much more effective than her tinkering with minute details.

To put the problem differently: Why would a person go to the trouble of removing all her fingerprints from the scene of a crime, along with bits of hair, etc., while simultaneously videotaping her crime and then distributing that visual record for the entire world to see? This appears to make no sense.

That's the paradox. To resolve the paradox, and to understand the reason for its existence, is necessary, if not entirely sufficient, to understand what I previously described as the intensely personal nature of Wendy's plagarism.

I will stop here so as to give the more psychologically astute OLers time to ponder this cosmic puzzle. I will present my own resolution of the paradox later on.

Meanwhile, feel free to post your own theories.

Ghs

[9thdoctor]

Adam,

No I never claimed any argument, refutation, or criticism is based upon my teaching. That assumption of your argument is false. I did comment tangentially that I would have failed students who offered such sloppy invalid arguments, but that is unimportant with regard to the merit of the refutations. The invalidity of the arguments are inherent to them, not dependent upon ANY viewer or opinion. What you are asking for is a defense of appeal to authority, which I cannot offer since I make no appeal to authority in the first place, for to do so would be fallacious as I have noted.

Reality, not personality, determines what is true. Look to the refutations and note that they all stand on their own merit. Who offers an argument is always unimportant, except to those whose egos are so fragile that they cannot accept that reality rather than their personality, determines what is true.

As for the attacks, you seem to be dodging the point. Yes I could clearly see that intellectual honesty, civility, and reason were not the norm in this thread, but that does not change the existence or nature of the attacks. Having limited knowledge of this forum, I would not dream of disputing your claim that such childish behavior is the norm here, I would only point out that it is not the norm in honest, civil, intellectual discussions where truth, rather than emotion, is the objective. You can believe that or not, go experience it or not. That does not matter to me one whit. As for the implication that I have been personally hurt by the attacks, you again miss the point. Citing the desperation that is exemplified by such attacks, by the abandonment of even the pretense of honesty, reason and evidence, does not indicate any felt pain, rather it simply adds to the growing mountain of reason for skepticism as to the veracity of claims of authorship of anything at all on the nature of reason.

A sound argument is only harmed by fallacies like ad hominems. I cannot seem to recall Susan Haack opting for the tantrum option rather than the sound argument option.

I don't wish to accuse anyone unfairly, but do you suppose Phil would seek revenge by posting under the pseudonym "Bertrand"? The posts in question have the same style of argument that Phil used to use, e.g., the stress on logic and fallacies written by someone who doesn't understand much of either. And then there is the pedantic stress on irrelevancies.

This post definitely smells like Phil, but there's another post where Bertie uses the quote function. But! ineptly, still the attempt was made, violating one of the essential hallmarks of Phil's style.

I'm not sure if Lobachevsky has been posted on this thread yet.

Edited June 19, 2011 by Ninth Doctor

[9thdoctor]

Meanwhile, feel free to post your own theories.

FWIW, my theory is that she expected you to be dead in a ditch, from an overdose or whatever, by the time the book was out. Just a guess, really.