1. Not true. I didn’t say that Gardner was irresponsible. I said that, overall, his article was irresponsible (actually, I never even put this in the article, although I do think this). In fact, I opened by saying that his reporting is generally better than most.

2. I concede that my premises are my attempt to reconstruct his argument. I said so in my article. He never made an explicit argument. I’m stoked for someone to say that I got the premises wrong. But as I pointed out, his bad conclusion is still bad, even with revised terms; even, I would note, with your suggestion to use the term “important.” His conclusions are still unwarranted.

3. I did ask Gardner whether he knows a woman that has chosen to wear the veil, and he didn’t answer. I took that as “probably” – but notice that I included a footnote, inviting someone to correct me. By the way, I asked Gardner why he ignores feedback from women who choose to wear the veil. He said essentially, that it doesn’t fit with his view of human nature. The question of Gardner’s expertise in Islam and the wearing of the veil is relevant, don’t you agree?

4. The issue of ad hominem is confusing. I *think* I have accused Gardner of, in the case of this article, employing bad reasoning, misusing evidence, and contributing to a *possibly* irresponsible cultural milieu of criticizing women’s choices. And I *think* I have done due diligence in substantiating my claims. But it’s confusing to me, because Gardner has called me “snotty” and a “troll”. Gardner even went so far as to say it was unfair of me to write a long article criticizing his short article. So as far as I can tell, all of the unsubstantiated personal attacks, have been, so far, directed at me. And yet my concerns are earnest.

5. It is true that Gardner wrote an article that I wouldn’t have. I agree with that.

6. Your final paragraph is confusing to me. I never said veils help. I think the issue is complicated and deserves deeper consideration. But even if the veils *did* help, there might be a hundred other contributing factors as to why the correlation you suggest is not observable.

One last note. I have never defended those that force women to wear a veil against their will. The issue at hand is the more complicated issue: is the consensual wearing of a veil anti-woman, anti-human and anti-social as Gardner has concluded. And, by the way, while I think Gardner’s conclusions are hasty, and problematic, I think the question is still an open one.

To answer your question: No. I think Dan Gardner is not always right, but I think that he is fair, clearer than most, and responsible. I think you are simply trying to shut down opinions you don’t like by pronouncing on who is privileged to speak about this issue or that and that you would hypocritically decry the same sort of actions if done by someone who you disagreed with. I think that the criterion you employ to determine the legitimacy of an argument by determining how “helpful” it is (presumably to the politics and opinions you happen to favour) is anti-intellectual and a bit cowardly.

I think that you mischaracterize Gardner’s arguments. I think that there is no plausible charitable interpretation of the extent that you do this. One thing I’ve noticed is that as soon as internet philosophers start to make a list of premises of their interpretation of someone else’s argument it is a very good sign that a strawman is being constructed.

“premise 1: Human faces are essential to good social functioning.” Replace that with “Human faces are important for good social function”

“premise 2: Anything that partly covers the face, will block good social functioning.” Replace with ” Anything that partly covers the face, will impede good social functioning.”

“I actually think that premise 1 and premise 2 are both demonstrably false.” Well, you would think that, because you constructed them to be that way. I do notice that you don’t bother to put the “demonstrate” in “demonstrably”.

“If he had just said, the veil can interfere with this, I would be okay with that. Heck, I think sunglasses interfere with some pattern recognition and social interactions. I think hats do to. That’s why poker players wear sunglasses and hats. But to conclude that none of this can happen with a veil is unfounded. None is an absolute term. None is total. It’s rhetoric. And it’s rhetoric from someone who probably has never interviewed, or had a basic relationship with, a woman that wears a veil.”

Ok, let’s deal with this right now. That last sentence. That is “total” rhetoric. How do you know whether he has had a personal relationship with someone who wears the veil or not? You have no idea. This is a (somewhat) subtle ad hom argument – you are making an assertion about your oponent for which you have no evidence (not that having evidence makes it any less of an ad hom) in order to claim that he has no right to even present the argument. The irony is entertaining. I would love to see you try to explain a purpose for that sentence other than “total” rhetoric.

Second of all, let us consider the strawman that is sentence five. You present Gardner’s statement “But none of that can happen if a veil is in the way.” as referring to ALL social interactions when it is clear that, in context, it refers to communication through facial expressions.

Your next list of premises is ridiculous to the point of being farcial.

“That’s why internet chat works. ” LMFAO.

“In the case of music auditions, large veils, that block gender and race assignments, actually improve social functioning.” Oh boy. The very things that niqab’s AMPLIFY.

“That’s why veils at weddings are so great” They are?

“That’s why it makes sense sometimes to wear a veil to a funeral.” Why?

“The poker game succeeds just fine when the superstar wears sunglasses.” Who cares?

“Scuba divers wear masks and welders too. ” Yeah, and we all know how they liven up a party with their welding masks and regulators. Too bad they’re not allowed to take them off when they go to the supermarket.

“To his credit, Gardner does mention repeatedly that bigotry is also a problem, but he never really grapples with it enough to satisfy me that he takes it seriously.” Translation: He didn’t write the article that you would have written.

If veils help more than they hurt women’s participation in the wider society, one would expect a correlation between equality and participation and the frequency with which women wear veils. If we look around the world at, say, Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi, what do we see? Equality? Participation?

Which, maybe your theory about the editorial board changing the language, in order to make the article more controversial, speaks to that. That’s interesting. It lacks integrity, if true. But it’s interesting. If it is true, then they have put advertising revenue over earnest research. Hopefully Gardner wouldn’t have stood for that.

Although the fact that he made such poor inferences is also a mystery. It occurs to me that someone could actually argue, from all the same psychological and biological premises, to the complete reverse conclusion.

Veils filter and shift social interactions in a way that allows the wearer to gather information but not to have information gathered about them. Like poker players. So there is a social advantage to wearing a veil, in a context that is abusive, partriarchal, or anti-feminist.

I’m not making that argument, for the same reasons that I think it’s irresponsible to be making the argument that Gardner did. But it’s interesting to see how Gardner’s style of impulsive theorizing could lead to the opposite conclusions.

Given the context and the thrust of my other criticisms, do you think this would make more sense?

It is OK. You’re doing it, are you not?

McVety has a long history of misrepresenting facts (some would call that lying) to support his twisted view of life. In fact, his refusal to stop using lies to support these views is the reason that CTS removed his television show from the air. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, the voluntary body that sets the standards for what can be broadcast, even supported Mcvety’s right to broadcast his opposition to homosexuality, gay marriage, the teacher’s curriculum, the Pride parade, whatever. Sounds like free speech to me. The issue they had was that McVety violated these standards when he misrepresented the facts in order to support his views. The council making this ruling does not violate the Charter because membership in the council is voluntary, and McVety signed off on the council’s code of ethics/conduct when he signed on to broadcast his show in the first place. So not only is he a lier but he knowingly and willingly breaches a contract that he signed.

(LTS, not enough IMCO)

I reply merely for information (IRMFI).

How did you arrive at your conclusions?

Exactly. Climate alarmists are precisely the same for me. The invisible white guy in the sky is just like this invisible greenhouse gas which is everywhere but you can’t see it. It is based on fear, fear that if we continue our unsustainable sinful ways our climate god will cause catastrophic climate disaster. We have climate scientists who are the only ones who understand the science just like Preachers used to be the only ones who understood the Bible in the old days, and we have to accept their word for it in the same way. If you question their opinion you were called a heretic, today you’re a climate heretic. If you asked a preacher for evidence for the existence of god, they find it everywhere, they would claim God was responsible for everything. Today if you ask a climate alarmist for evidence of ACC they can find it everywhere, and they blame ACC for everything as well. Ever seen how many events around the world are now blamed on ACC? Virtually everything is blamed on ACC, just like God used to be. Al Gore is like a new Pope and every country in the world has its top ACC guy, like new Apostles. When you talk to a climate alarmist, its like talking to an evangelical Christian, they don’t hear you they just continue yammering on about their belief and fear, like you aren’t even there. Climate alarmism is a new fear which has replaced the old fear of God. The parallels between religious fanaticism and climate fanaticism are astounding.

Its a puzzle alright. I’m as puzzled as you are.

And science is definitely more enlightened than the fucking climate change denier jackasses.

So hey climate change deniers: fuck off.

What is tricky for me is that I want scientifically derived knowledge to have a special character that trumps other kinds of knowledge, so I can tell climate change deniers to fuck off conclusively. But science is, as you are getting at here, a series of metaphors. It’s not as simple as “all knowledge is subjective”, but still it is metaphors.

But science has *better* metaphors right? More reliable metaphors. So hey climate change deniers: fuck off.

Ok, but it’s also a matter of time, Evolution has been tested for 150 years and it has stood up to the closest scrutiny, ACC hardly 40 and it falls apart on the most cursory scrutiny. Climate science is not in the same league.

“All credible, expert opinion predicts the effects of unmitigated climate change will be somewhere between extremely bad for society to society-ending. It will also increase the rate of the ongoing mass extinction.”

I agree, unmitigated climate change will produce the next glaciation which could bring ice all the way down south of the 44th parallel like it did last time. Society ending, I have no doubt. Increase mass extinction? Most likely. Blaming it all on burning fossil fuels? Sorry, not getting on that bandwagon. And good luck mitigating it.

Cheers