[SCL] Back again, and an old non-business matter

[Chris Menzel]

Folks, 

I was really out of the loop for a couple of months there with a number of
overriding personal and professional issues to deal with, but I've managed to a
huge amount off of my plate, so I'm returning to active SCL duty.  There is one
little piece of old non-business to attend to as list manager.  I really do
*not* want to bring the issue of Jon Awbrey back on the table again, but I do
think it is important to go on the record about a couple of things in response
to something Murray said:

On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 04:42:34AM +0000, Murray Altheim wrote:
> Jon was not trying to shut this list down. He was trying to correct what he
> thought were errors. Some of his comments were very valuable.  You apparently
> had shut your ears to the times his input was taken seriously and considered
> appropriately. Yes, he ran the risk and has now paid. He may not have had any
> choice -- not everyone is capable of acting in accordance with strict rules.
> Look at some of history's most important thinkers. Like Peirce, even. They
> often didn't fit in.  I believe we owe both them and ourselves the benefit of
> the doubt, as to exclude people like Jon we are potentially shutting out
> another potentially-significant thinker. I believe as a human, humane
> community we have a responsibility to *try* to help people work out their
> difficulties in communication rather than shut them up in some intellectual
> leper colony. You may not feel so generous about Jon as I do, but you have no
> right to shut him up.

First point: SCL is a project with a (reasonably:-) clearly defined agenda.
The SCL working group is not an open-ended discussion group, but, as the name
implies, a group with work to do and a certain perspective on how to do it.
People who disagree with that perspective can do so to their hearts' content in
appropriate forums, but not here; we've already done the soul searching and
navel gazing.  I in fact suggested the discussion move to the CL list when I
took Jon off the SCL list.  The SUO ontology list would be another place,
except that Jon has pretty much become the only one to post to it.  There are
places where dissent is appropriate, and places where it's not.  The Young
Conservatives of Texas have a right to be heard, but they don't have a right to
attend our local Brazos Progressives meetings and try to force debate on every
issue.  And they don't have to let me come to their business meetings and rant
about George Bush and what I think he's doing to our country and the world.
People with a certain perspective have a right to gather and discuss their view
and their work with others who are like-minded without being disrupted by those
who don't share those views, regardless of their legitimacy.  Free speech does
not mean you get to say whatever you want wherever you want whenever you want.

Second point:  If you'll look back on the archives of the IEEE SUO list, where
reasonable discussion and debate over broad philosophical issues were
appropriate, you'll see that Awbrey was given much more than the benefit of the
doubt.  I myself spent a *lot* of time at one point going carefully through
Awbrey's stuff.  Doing my best to look past the Peircean religious trappings,
what I found was a nicely packaged retelling of propositional and first-order
logic from a quirky, more or less algebraic perspective, with a little category
theory thrown in for good measure -- always touted, however, as something new
and revolutionary.  It's not.  Everything he does has already been done (it's
mostly just good ol' FOL after all, once you get past the smoke and mirrors),
and for purposes here his ideas are irrelevant:  We know FOL up, down, and
sideways, so there's nothing he can teach us there, and we have no use for his
quirky packaging of it.

These are not mere assertions.  I argued all of this in detail in many posts to
the SUO list.  (Difficult to find the most illustrative msgs, alas -- the huge
SUO list archive is almost useless, as it has no search function -- but even a
quick look will reveal many posts from me in response to Awbrey.) Awbrey never
rebutted my arguments or answered my criticisms.  (Not to say he didn't
*reply*, he just didn't *rebut*.)  He simply continued to post his quirky
repackaged goods and, bizarrely, to spam the list with *incessant* and
pointless lengthy verbatim quotations from math textbooks.  So while I realize
it might appear to Murray that I just shut Jon up without giving him a fair
hearing, the fact is I spent countless hours evaluating and responding to
Awbrey's work fairly and honestly in an appropriate forum.  (Admittedly, some
of my later responses to him on SUO show some exasperation -- justifiable, in
my view, as by that point it was clear to me that Awbrey was a primary reason
why no one any longer took that initially promising project seriously.) That
forum, and the IEEE ontology forum, have already provided him with a bigger
soapbox than his ideas warrant.  People can peruse those lists and read his
gospel to their hearts' content.  The issues Awbrey wished to voice on the SCL
list are old news, hashed and rehashed, and his own take on those issues are
either irrelevant (for us), refuted, or represented far more eloquently by John
Sowa.  We have no obligation to give him yet another forum here or to help him
work out his "communication difficulties".  Indeed, with the precious little
time we are able to devote to the project as it is, in *this* forum we have an
obligation NOT to.  

-chris

ps: I will not respond to the list about anything in this post, though I will
be happy to engage in offline discussion, time permitting.