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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (6762)	4/19/2004 8:18:36 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

That's not criticizing the "plan". It would be criticizing the very basic logic of a belief that rocks constitute a viable food source, which it obviously is not. It is criticizing the plan. The (unstated) reason for the criticism is that rocks do not constitute a viable food source. The fact that the flaw in the logic for the plan is more obvious doesn't change the fact that I would criticize the plan, not just the flaw. In my hypothetical the plans weakness where glaring and obvious, but any good refutation by logical analogy will use such an extreme case. If the idea "when someone criticizes someone else's plan, it does make them responsible for providing a viable alternative" was going to be a generally accepted principle then it should also apply to the extreme cases like my hypothetical. But when someone presents a logical, and potentially viable, solution to a problem, and the other party chooses to criticize it; is it not logical that such criticism should be followed up by an alternative solution? There is no principle of logic that says it should. So I wouldn't say "is in not logical that...". I would agree that it can be useful (both for rhetorical purposes and for the purpose of actually trying to solve the problem) to propose an alternative solution, however if such an alternative is not at hand stopping a bad proposal is it self useful. After all, if only one person is responsible for creating potential solutions, while the other bears no responsibility, or intellectual burden, for creating an alternative, then the debate will quickly digress to personalities and partisanship. That isn't the case here. No one is claiming that you have some enforceable responsibility to come up with a working solution to the Arab/Israeli problem or any other problem. You responsibility as a poster on this thread, or a participant in this conversation is no different then mine. (your responsibility as the moderator can be considered separately from that as a poster). Tim