Tractatus :
Should he refuse it, we then ignore Robert, the speaker, from whom no truth will come, and allow his actions to take his place in the discussion, in effect. The granted point is now one whose legitimacy, as it is used in discussion, is no longer in serious dispute. We may move forward.
As you force yourself into him, I bet.
Listen to yourself. The way you phrase things. It sounds almost like a rape, with you taking Robert's acknowledgment without his consent.
You've confused a statement with its converse."If she was violated, then coercion was used in some sense."is certainly a true statement, but it is not equivalent to"If coercion was used in some sense, then she was violated."What if the coercion consisted of forcibly removing a purloined item from the tightly clenched hands of a shoplifter? The shoplifter may be most upset by this and may even feel powerless at that moment, but would she have any legitimate grounds for feeling that she had been violated by the action?
The victim of a rape refused something the taker was not entitled to - the enjoyment of her body. What we have taken from Robert, without consent, is honest acknowledgement of that which he already knows. Would you seriously wish to argue that Robert is morally entitled to his insincerity? Because he is not.
Comments : There is an important point that comes out of this discussion. When someone expresses the opinion that life is of no value, he is branded a liar merely by benefit of being here to express the opinion. The value of life, therefore, is something that we don't need to establish, because it can't be a matter of sincere controversy.
By the same tack, if someone claims that he believes that we must prove our starting assumptions in order to be able to reasonably hold them with any degree of firm conviction, we may then ask him how he managed to prove that stepping in front of a moving car would be a bad idea, without assuming anything at all (like, say, that getting killed would be a misfortune). His very presence indicates that when he says he believes in that sort of rigor, he's merely speaking for effect and we waste our time by arguing the point with him.
Was the point made in this dialog, in a rude fashion? Perhaps, but it was no ruder or more flippant than the argument that it was offered in response to. Some will say, "Couldn't one be the bigger man in the argument, and let people see what an idiot Robert was, as he ranted?"
That's a nice, comforting idea, but we have to deal with people as they actually are, not as we like to pretend they are, during idealized class exercises. The fact of the matter is, that a gentle response to a rant, tends to be perceived as a weak one, that people stop listening to. Having come under attack, one must make it clear that one isn't to be trifled with. Women tend to disagree, and think that this is a very "male" attitude - which is easy to do, when others (generally men) have been fighting in one's stead. But reality is, that someone has been doing the fighting, and if one is willing to accept the benefits of a fight, one is in no position to criticise the notion of engaging in it.
At this point, the reader can either choose to