Misunderstanding and Correction or Misrepresentation and Deception

What evidence?You've merely asserted after the fact that I was mistaken in how I interpreted your words.But I believe I was not, and that you are making that assertion falsely because you wish to backpedal from a position you adopted without thinking about it. So, I don't believe you.What evidence can you provide that actually supports your assertion that you meant something other than what you said?

I have provided the evidence; it's the difference between what you said, and what you later insisted you had actually meant.

No, you only provided the assertion. So you say, but I continue to not believe you.

And I explained how their interpretation was necessarily in error. If you had replied to the question and not tot he paragraph, you would not have quoted the paragraph and then replied to it.Because your reply follows the paragraph and not the question, I'm able to determine that you were replying to the paragraph and not the question.If you quoted the paragraph by mistake, that's fine; I'm willing to concede that your actions cause you to have said something other than what you intended. Of course, if that's the case, it looks a little suspicious that you waited so long to try to address the confusion you caused.I do genuinely think it's possible for us to arrive at a resolution of this disagreement but it's going to have to be based on you, overcoming your irrational unwillingness to admit that I'm right about something.

On this board, replies to material follow the quoted material, and that's the format that I expected you were following because that's the format you have always followed, and continue to follow even in this thread. Are you saying that you accidentally responded to the paragraph instead of to the question?If that's the case, I can accept that your mistake caused you to pretty substantially misrepresent your own position.If that's the case, though, why did you wait so long to correct the obvious misunderstanding? I don't perceive them as being in any particular contradiction; I perceive one as an unsuccessful attempt to clarify the other.It is, frankly, not uncommon for you to unintentionally say things that are contradictory or simply unclear. Poor or unclear writing is hardly uncharacteristic of you. So what? That doesn't place you in any particularly privileged seat when it comes to what you meant, and it certainly doesn't obligate me to take your assertions about what you meant at face-value or privilege them ahead of what you actually said. Because you replied to the paragraph. Ergo, you responded to the paragraph. If you did so by mistake I'm prepared to accept that, but it leaves unexplained why you allowed the discussion to continue for so long on the basis of the obvious misunderstanding you'd caused. Surely it was immediately obvious that I was replying to you as though you'd replied to the paragraph and not to the question?

Yes. Because "I think that's an appropriate way to construe it" is a sentence that signals agreement with whatever was just said. Just like if you said:

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Isn't it true that Pride and Prejudice is made more awesome by the presence of zombies?

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and then I replied

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I think that's an appropriate way to construe it.

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You would be correct in interpreting me as indicating agreement."I think that's an appropriate way to construe it" is a sentence that clearly indicates agreement. If PD had really meant to reply to the question in the negative, she would have written a negative sentence that followed the question, not a positive sentence that followed a paragraph. Because I have the ability to read her words. What she actually wrote is much more reliable guide to what she meant when she wrote it than anything she has later to say about what she meant when she wrote it. If she genuinely made an error in expressing her intent, that's fine. If that really happened I've stated several times that I'm prepared to accept it.But, she's adamant that she said exactly what she intended to say. Thus, I'm forced to reject her subsequent insistence that I've somehow misinterpreted her. She said what she intended to say - by her own admission! - and what she said was that she agreed with how I'd construed the passage. Because it's not. The author dies as soon as he writes. The person you were when you wrote something isn't the person you are, now, to later talk about writing it. The author's statements of intention are really irrelevant to the interpretation of the text.Seriously, I can't be the only one here trained in literary criticism, can I? You've honestly never heard of the Intentional Fallacy?

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Intentional fallacy, in literary criticism, addresses the assumption that the meaning intended by the author of a literary work is of primary importance. By characterizing this assumption as a "fallacy", a critic suggests that the author's intention is not important. The term is an important principle of New Criticism and was first used by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley in their essay "The Intentional Fallacy" (1946 rev. 1954): "the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art." The phrase "intentional fallacy" is somewhat ambiguous, but it means "a fallacy about intent" and not "a fallacy committed on purpose."

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Reasons for not committing the Intentional Fallacy:

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(1) Internal evidence. Internal evidence is the actual details present inside a given work. The apparent content of a work is the internal evidence, including any historical knowledge and past expertise or experience with the kind of art being interpreted that is required to understand what that work is: its forms and traditions. The form of epic poetry, the meter, quotations etc. are internal to the work. This information is internal to the type (or genre) of art that is being examined, and includes those things physically present in the work itself. Analysis of an artwork based on internal evidence never presents an intentional fallacy.

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(2) External evidence. What is not literally contained in the work itself is external to that work, including all statements the artist made privately or published in journals about the work, or in conversations, e-mail, etc. External evidence is concerned with claims about why the artist made the work: reasons external to the fact of the work in itself. Evidence of this type is directly concerned with what the artist may have intended to do even or especially when it is not apparent from the work itself, and is an example of an intentional fallacy.

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(3) Contextual evidence. The third type of evidence concerns any meanings produced from a particular work's relationship to other art made by the same artistincluding its exhibition (where, when and by whom). The use of biographical information in a discussion of an artwork does not necessarily indicate an intentional fallacy. The meaning of an artist's work may be affected by the particulars of who does the work (identity) without necessarily that interpretation as an intentional fallacy.

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Thus, a text's internal evidence the words themselves, and their meanings is fair game for literary analysis. External evidence anything not contained within the text itself, such as information about the poet's life belongs to literary biography, not literary criticism. Preoccupation with the author "leads away from the poem."

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_FallacyNow, we're not talking about poetry, here, but we are interpreting language. Thus it's clear that committing the Intentional Fallacy - as PD would have us do - actually leads us away from the true meaning of what they meant. It's not a guide to the meaning of what people are saying to take their stated intentions into account; it actually conceals what they may have meant. Because I'm not committing the Intentional Fallacy, but they are. Just because you wrote something, doesn't give you any particular insight into what it meant when you wrote it. Obviously. Not in the least. I'm continually surprised by this insistence that I'm somehow arrogant. I hardly know anything at all - I'm just a lot less credulous, apparently, than you. But I'm continually suspicious of my own ability to accurately apprehend things. That's why I insist on good evidence for things I believe are true and don't simply take people's word for things.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

And just to add to this, I believe I'm particular right in this view because it's what we're asked to do by the Forum Guidelines:

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Always treat other members with respect. Argue the position, not the person.

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Argue the position, not the person. In this case, preoccupation with the person - with their intent - leads us away from the positions. And it's the positions we're asked to address, not the person.

That's correct. You quoted material, and then you replied to that material.You quoted a paragraph and then you replied to that paragraph. So I was correct in how I originally interpreted you. So you intentionally responded to the paragraph instead of to the question. Um, this is precisely what I was instructed as an English major - how to interpret text without preoccupation with author biography. As I've just explained to CS what I was instructed in as an English major was not to commit the Intentional Fallacy, as you are now asking me to do. My recollection is that several posts over several days elapsed in between my reply indicating that I had interpreted you as assenting to a paragraph instead of contradicting a question and your first insistence that I had "misrepresented" you, and that your insistence that I misrepresented you began only when I showed you how positions you had indicated assent to had directly contradicted the position you opened the thread to defend. You're responding to the paragraph. When you want to answer questions, you quote only the question - as you've done in this very post:

PaulK, I don't see how your "findings" can be accurate. Message 27 and 28 were posted on May 5th; the first time that PD accuses me of having "misunderstood" her remarks is Message 40, which was posted May 8th.That's an elapsed period of three days, or "several days" as I said.I'm correct in how I've construed the exchange. This is inaccurate; the post clearly specifies that it was a reply to Message 29. It's right there at the bottom.

Your first "correction" - that is, the time when you began to falsely claim that I had misrepresented you - is Message 40, posted three days after the initial exchange. PaulK's summary is doubly incorrect.So, again - if there was a genuine misrepresentation why did it take you three days to correct it?

So she says. I don't believe her, and it's obvious from the text that she's not. But I've made no error, as I've explained. Thus "crashfrog made an error" can't be the explanation. You're right - it's very obvious that she intended to agree with me that the modern interpretation of the verse, as I described, was "appropriate." I mean, who could possibly disagree with that? Why would anyone believe the converse? That's just idiotic. You're half right - courts interpret written confessions according to what they say on paper, not what the defendant says about what he meant when he wrote it. When you provide a written confession to the court, guess how much credence you're given when you later come back and say "Uh, oops, I guess there was some kind of misunderstanding - I didn't actually intend to confess to murder on paper, I thought I was writing a crime story from the perspective of the murderer!"None at all, typically. Even in cases where that might actually be true - where police genuinely have tricked or manipulated people, particularly those with cognitive impairments, into writing false confessions. The power of the written word is stronger than the author's testaments. The Intentional Fallacy is almost always a fallacy. Yes! Now you're getting it. After all, they could simply be lying - particularly when they refuse to take any responsibility at all for how they caused a misunderstanding, if indeed one occurred. There's every possible way I could be wrong about this, which is why ever since PD came up with this "misunderstanding" nonsense, I've tried to go back and re-read her comments in the light of her testament that I got it wrong.But it just doesn't track. Every time I do I'm like "um, no, just doesn't work - there's just no way she didn't mean 'That's an appropriate way to construe it.'" That's a signal phrase for agreement, regardless of PD's later self-serving testament to the contrary.I mean I had her pretty much boxed in on her own words. Of course she'd come back with some nonsense about how I'd misrepresented her. That's what you people always do when I catch you in a contradiction.

Uh, no. There's no mention of any "misunderstanding" in message 31, and the message indicates your continued agreement:

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I agree that the phrase "worshiping Mammon" does not include any actual worship.

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Rather than being a correction, Message 31 simply continues our accord on the appropriate interpretation of the passage. You knew exactly what words of yours gave me that idea, because not only did you write them, I quoted them back to you when you asked me where you had said what you said. If a misunderstanding had occurred it was apparent long before the three days you waited to tell me I was in the wrong. You're right, it is. So how is it that you're getting it so wrong?

Why would it? If I told you I agreed with you about something that you thought was in dispute, why would you do anything but take it as given and then continue on to the next part of your argument?If you said "well, I'm glad you agree!" I would conclude you were a condescending ass. It's kind of rude, frankly. That's clearly message 28, which is obviously intended as a reply to message 27. It says so at the bottom. I have no trouble understanding it, PaulK, you're just wrong. Do you understand how, now that you've been corrected twice?

It would be in message 28, the direct reply, where it was clear that I interpreted her as indicating assent. And then, as if that wasn't clear enough, there was message 30, still on May 5th:

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You've already agreed, though, that that's not what "worshiping a false god" means. You've agreed that it doesn't mean temples and prostrate worship; you've agreed that it means "putting material concerns ahead of spiritual ones."

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And then if that wasn't enough, when she tried to backpedal from her initial agreement on the issue, still on the 5th, I said:

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I'm sorry? Did you not write Message 27? If someone else is posting under your name maybe you could let Percy know. But Message 27 as written has this exchange:

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crash writes:
There's not a lot of competition for Christianity anymore, at least not among polytheistic religions. That's the reason that the passage in Jeremiah is interpreted, in modern theology, to refer to not letting shallow material concerns, like wealth, power, prestige, or influence, supersede more important spiritual concerns.

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dawn writes:
I think it is an appropriate way to construe it.

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And then finally on the 9th (sorry, it's the 9th rather than the 8th as I mistakenly said earlier) she replies to this message by indicating that I've "misinterpreted" her remarks:

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I've given you notice that you have misconstrued my response.

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Four days later? What took so long if this was a "misunderstanding"? If it was a misunderstanding it certainly should have been clear on the 5th, when I directly told her how I was interpreting her remarks and which remarks I was interpreting.Four days to come up with "oh, this is all your fault and your misinterpretation"? That's what it looks like when someone is casting about for an excuse to justify a major backpedal, not what it looks like when someone says to themselves "wow, how did I get misunderstood so completely? Oh, I see - haha, what a goof! Here's what I really meant."Instead I'm "on notice" despite the fact that this is literally the first time she's suggested that anything has been "misinterpreted." Of course, it's not the first time PD has wrongfully accused me of it so should I be surprised that it's her first recourse when she realizes she can't dig herself out of this hole?And, of course she has to open this thread about it, because she's committed to it. She can't possibly agree that she's backpedaling or even that she spoke ambiguously because she's committed herself to this line of attack. She's stuck.Obviously. I can't for the life of me see how any other interpretation makes sense. I've been charitable enough to extend the olive branch and allow PD to simply admit she spoke ambiguously and caused the misunderstanding, but even that was rebuffed.Because it's personal for her. She needs Crashfrog's head on her mantlepiece, at this point. She's even admitted it.

If it's your belief that you can communicate concepts without using the words that would indicate those concepts, that might be an explanation for how your writing style causes substantial misunderstandings of your intended meaning.So, I accept your apology and your promise to improve on it in the future. After all, the fact that you've neither used the words "apology" or "I intend to improve on it in the future" shouldn't be interpreted as indicating that you're neither apologizing nor promising to improve, right? No, it's just you claiming not to have said something that you said. You're neither the first nor the last to do so, and it's not a "correction" it's an attempt to mislead. People do it all the time. I've even done it, and imagine the egg on my face when people throw my own words back up at me.They're right to do so, but man is it humiliating. I understand the humiliation you must have felt and therefore the temptation to ride this "crashfrog misinterprets things" train.But it's not working. People can see that you simply tried to backpedal out of it and got caught, and they know that when I do genuinely make errors I take responsibility for them and correct myself. PaulK knows it because I recently had to do so to him in another thread. Jar and Jon know that I do it because I've sought correction from the two of them recently as well.It's time for you to take responsibility as well, and admit either that your language imprecision led to this misunderstanding or that you actually got cornered in an argument and tried to talk your way out. I promise I'm not going to hold either against you. If you want we'll never even talk about it again. I really don't care about anything except you discontinuing your shame-driven personal vendetta against me.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.