# Allergic to worldview considerations



## cih1355 (Nov 8, 2010)

I was listening to one of Greg Bahnsen's lectures and he said that modern philosophy is allergic to worldview considerations. Modern philosophy has taken too sharp of a analytical turn that its concerns are narrow. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?


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## jwithnell (Nov 8, 2010)

I'd say the opposite is true. We see a rapid decline in the ability to analyze and evaluate on a philosophical level. Look at the rise of "New Age" over the last 25 years. Look at folks that eat up "gospel light" churches. Consider the total vapid popular entertainment. Starting with such a weak foundation, it's nearly impossible to get outside of their thoughts long enough to consider the driving principles.


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## Marrow Man (Nov 8, 2010)

I think what he means is that too many folks, influenced by modernism (and this would include modern philosophy) accept that worldview _a priori_. I know I have run into discussion with people who are modernistic in their thinking and they are not even willing to consider the concept of different philosophical worldviews, even to the point of ridiculing such a notion.


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## puritan628 (Nov 8, 2010)

Marrow Man said:


> people who are modernistic in their thinking and they are not even willing to consider the concept of different philosophical worldviews, even to the point of ridiculing such a notion.




That would be the vast majority of the college students I teach. They are so consumed with external stimuli that they rarely, if ever, consider the "big questions." It's sad, really.


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## seajayrice (Nov 8, 2010)

I'd think the opposite. As Francis Schaeffer pointed out so well, since The Enlightenment, modern philosophy has viewed man and his world views as the standard which gods must meet. So perhaps in that sense modern thinking has become vain and narrow.


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## Zenas (Nov 8, 2010)

I believe both CJ and Tim's evaluations can be melded into agreement. People demand that the supernatural conform to their own worlview, all the while unable to recognize that other worldviews exist or interact with them in any meaningful manner.

Case in point: my liberal friend. When questioned about his own worldview, he literally didn't understand the question I was aking when I asked him to demonstrate why a certain action was "right" or "wrong" under his worldview. "Does not compute" came to mind. He merely asserted that certain actons or results were wrong and that his beliefs were the best answer for those wrongs. When I pressed him further, he simply started giving the effect of those actions and essentially said, "How can you NOT agree those things are wrong?" to which I replied, "Why are those results wrong?" 

Still didn't work. He admitted he had no idea what I was talking about and couldn't conceptualize what I was trying to prove. He wasn't being obtuse, he's a pretty candid guy, he literally didn't understand what I was asking. He still insisted that my worldview was invalid because it didn't prove the same answers that his did. 

This is how people are taught, the secular worldview is assumed and must not be proven. If you have a conversation with someone like this, it's over before it began because all of the rules are written so as to defeat you. If your worldview doesn't provide the same outcomes as theirs, you lose and they have no onus to prove why that's then necessary conclusion. 

Oddly enough, these are the same people who typically decry conservatives and/or Christians as irrational and ignorant.


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## seajayrice (Nov 8, 2010)

Epsitemolgy helps us better understand and be understood when we know why we believe and what we believe. "The Closing of the American Mind" chronicles the blight quite well. The ever increasing inability for critical reasoning and devaluation of thought leaves men like beasts.


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## Philip (Nov 8, 2010)

> I was listening to one of Greg Bahnsen's lectures and he said that modern philosophy is allergic to worldview considerations. Modern philosophy has taken too sharp of a analytical turn that its concerns are narrow. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?



As someone who is currently studying analytic philosophy, I see exactly where he's coming from. To a philosopher like Russell, Chisolm, Olson, or Searle, the kind of worldview analysis that Bahnsen does would be seen as pseudo-philosophy along the lines of Hegel, Heidegger, or Marx (they wouldn't take them seriously either). Bahnsen is complaining that he doesn't get taken seriously because modern analytic philosophy doesn't think there necessarily has to be a center. "Worldview," for this line of thinking, would be merely an emotive concept that has nothing to do with real reasoning or philosophy.


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## jwright82 (Nov 9, 2010)

P. F. Pugh said:


> > I was listening to one of Greg Bahnsen's lectures and he said that modern philosophy is allergic to worldview considerations. Modern philosophy has taken too sharp of a analytical turn that its concerns are narrow. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
> 
> 
> 
> As someone who is currently studying analytic philosophy, I see exactly where he's coming from. To a philosopher like Russell, Chisolm, Olson, or Searle, the kind of worldview analysis that Bahnsen does would be seen as pseudo-philosophy along the lines of Hegel, Heidegger, or Marx (they wouldn't take them seriously either). Bahnsen is complaining that he doesn't get taken seriously because modern analytic philosophy doesn't think there necessarily has to be a center. "Worldview," for this line of thinking, would be merely an emotive concept that has nothing to do with real reasoning or philosophy.


 
Yet Analytical philosophy has failed to resolve philosophical problems any better. Also it is Quine's web of beleif concept, as I understand it, that is what Bahnsen means by a world view, Quine is an analytical hero. Bahnsen was very educated in the analytical tradition so it could very well be argued that he is withen that tradition. There are analytical thinkers who take the notion of presuppositions seriously. Also modern Analytical philosophy is very influenced by the later Wittgenstien, another Analytical hero both early and later, who worked out his concept of a form of life, or theoretical perspective, which is very much in keeping with the notion of worldview. What he may have meant is an Analytical methodology which is preoccupied with particulers in a logical way, they do in-depth technical analysis of arguments and ideas, not big picture type stuff.

That doesn't mean that worldview analysis is wrong only that they are doing something much different. I would argue that it is impossible to do worldview analysis without logical analysis, by using their work so to speak. To doubt the existance of worldviews is a not very in keeping with how people generaly behave and think. We all seek, albeit imperfectly, to make sense out of reality. We are all forming beleifs in certian ways and we uncouncisly decide to systematize things in a way that generaly makes sense, our most important beleifs are the ones that we are less likley to change than in periphreal type beleifs which can be changed on a whim. That is all a worldview is, it is not much more complicated than that. If they view worldviews as ridiculous than they are probably criticizing a straw man. 

I have been renewred in my interest in Analytical philosophy thanks to our conversations and I see no conflict between the two. 



cih1355 said:


> Allergic to worldview considerations
> I was listening to one of Greg Bahnsen's lectures and he said that modern philosophy is allergic to worldview considerations. Modern philosophy has taken too sharp of a analytical turn that its concerns are narrow. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?



Is there any context that you can better place that phrase in so that we could make more sense out of it? I mean Postmodernism, which is modern enough, was obsessed with the idea of worldview, even the Analytical tradition has toyed with it. So I would be curious with what he was concretly reffering to.

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After rereading your post, I guess he did mean that it has gotten too particuler to care or respect worldview analysis. But what they are doing doesn't invalidate the idea of worldviews. Modern philosophy is very preoccupied with the concept of beleifs, if a worldview is just a system of beleifs or web than they will have to ask these questions eventually, right?


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## Peairtach (Nov 9, 2010)

i remember Bahnsen saying in one of his tapes that metaphysics was largely off the menu for modern and post-modern philosophy. He implied that this was part of the hiding from God of modern man.


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## Philip (Nov 9, 2010)

jwright82 said:


> To doubt the existance of worldviews is a not very in keeping with how people generaly behave and think. We all seek, albeit imperfectly, to make sense out of reality.



You have to understand, though, that "worldview" as Bahnsen, Van Til, or Dooyweerd would conceive of it, is a foreign concept here. For Wittgenstein, it would be a form of life or language-game that consists in constructed truths that are true only in the context of that language-game. For most others, "worldview" as a complete system of cohering beliefs through which the world is interpreted is not quite what they have in mind. In studying contemporary analytic philosophy, what I have discovered is that since the fall of Logical Positivism in the 1930s (and great was its fall), there has been no dominant philosophy. Instead, there have been individual philosophers, who have _positions_ on various issues, but no overarching system (apart from a couple exceptions, mostly Christians like Plantinga or Wolterstorff).



Richard Tallach said:


> i remember Bahnsen saying in one of his tapes that metaphysics was largely off the menu for modern and post-modern philosophy. He implied that this was part of the hiding from God of modern man.



Actually, I'm discovering that analytic metaphysics is alive and well---what he's complaining about is the fact that few see metaphysics as connected or relevant. Instead, it's a game that philosophers play.


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## cih1355 (Nov 9, 2010)

jwright82 said:


> P. F. Pugh said:
> 
> 
> > > I was listening to one of Greg Bahnsen's lectures and he said that modern philosophy is allergic to worldview considerations. Modern philosophy has taken too sharp of a analytical turn that its concerns are narrow. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
> ...


 
Bahnsen has a lecture series called, "Transcendental Arguments." In his first lecture, he talks about what I wrote in the OP. He said that if a person is going to delve into transcendental reasoning, he is going to think about worldviews. He is going to think about the "Big Questions." Some philosophers are so concerned with specialized subjects or problems that they don't put much emphasis on broad philosophical questions.

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What Bahnsen said was surprising. I thought all philosophers were interested in finding out which worldview or belief system is the correct one?


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## Philip (Nov 9, 2010)

cih1355 said:


> Some philosophers are so concerned with specialized subjects or problems that they don't put much emphasis on broad philosophical questions.



This would be a veiled attack on analytic philosophy in general. 

Analytic philosophy has tended to atomize various areas and questions, whereas continental philosophy has been much more concerned with larger questions of method and overarching systems/worldviews. Thus, analytic philosophers are going to view Marxism (for example) as being irrelevant to philosophy outside the political realm, whereas a continental philosopher (including most Marxists) are going to see it as much broader, informing every area of inquiry. The question is then: is all of our reasoning based on a capitalistic system that is keeping us blissfully unaware of our oppression? Continental philosophies, thus, are going to branch out into areas like hermeneutics (Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricouer), artistic, architectural, and literary criticism (the Frankfurt School, Lukacs, Marcuse), or semiotics (Saussure, Foucault), or simple political-social theory (Arendt, Kristeva, feminism).

What results is that continental philosophy tends to neglect metaphysics entirely, and approach traditional areas like epistemology and ethics from the side, so to speak.

The main opponents of these philosophies in the 20th century would be Dooyeweerd, Van Til, and Clark. The trouble is, though, that they don't interact very much with the philosophy of their time. Clark, for instance, ends his history of philosophy with Dewey, whose influence never extended outside the United States and is not taken seriously as a philosopher. Van Til's interaction, meanwhile, was largely with Barth, and so he paid little attention to Heidegger, the Frankfurt School, or even the analytic tradition. Schaeffer pays a good deal of attention to existentialism, but ignores most of the rest of the thought of the twentieth century. The result is that, while analytic philosophy, thanks to folks like Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, has become quite welcoming to Christianity, continental philosophy, apart from a few lights like Paul Ricouer and Jacques Ellul, is an intellectual desert for Christians.


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## jwright82 (Nov 9, 2010)

P. F. Pugh said:


> You have to understand, though, that "worldview" as Bahnsen, Van Til, or Dooyweerd would conceive of it, is a foreign concept here. For Wittgenstein, it would be a form of life or language-game that consists in constructed truths that are true only in the context of that language-game. For most others, "worldview" as a complete system of cohering beliefs through which the world is interpreted is not quite what they have in mind. In studying contemporary analytic philosophy, what I have discovered is that since the fall of Logical Positivism in the 1930s (and great was its fall), there has been no dominant philosophy. Instead, there have been individual philosophers, who have positions on various issues, but no overarching system (apart from a couple exceptions, mostly Christians like Plantinga or Wolterstorff).



I wouldn't say foriegn, a worldview or web of beleif is very much a common practice amongst people. My most sacred beleifs will affect what I regard as rational or beleivlable or not. The evolutionists ideas will affect what scientific theories they regard as scientificly worthy or not, that sort of stuff happens everyday. My point was that you could use Analytical philosophy to legitemize the study of worldviews, so there need not be an either or problem here. As far as Wittgenstien goes I don't think it is entierly fair to say that truth is a construction for him, unless of course you are trapped in a modernist mindset. He never to my knowledge stated that phrases could not be true in a sense. They can be used to describe reality, in a more analogical sense of course, but that is not to say that they are untrue as oppossed to true.

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cih1355 said:


> Bahnsen has a lecture series called, "Transcendental Arguments." In his first lecture, he talks about what I wrote in the OP. He said that if a person is going to delve into transcendental reasoning, he is going to think about worldviews. He is going to think about the "Big Questions." Some philosophers are so concerned with specialized subjects or problems that they don't put much emphasis on broad philosophical questions.
> 
> ---------- Post added at 11:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:04 PM ----------
> 
> What Bahnsen said was surprising. I thought all philosophers were interested in finding out which worldview or belief system is the correct one?



I agree but there are many examples of Analytical thinkers delving into such specific problems, but I guess worldview analysis was a no no for them in general. The issue of worldviews comes up all the time that is why it is unavoidable. But keep in mind that worldview can mean a few sorts of things so that might determine the viewpoint towards it. It can mean an idealized historical philosophy, like empiricism, or the actual nitty gritty viewpoint of someone you are talking to.

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P. F. Pugh said:


> This would be a veiled attack on analytic philosophy in general.
> 
> Analytic philosophy has tended to atomize various areas and questions, whereas continental philosophy has been much more concerned with larger questions of method and overarching systems/worldviews. Thus, analytic philosophers are going to view Marxism (for example) as being irrelevant to philosophy outside the political realm, whereas a continental philosopher (including most Marxists) are going to see it as much broader, informing every area of inquiry. The question is then: is all of our reasoning based on a capitalistic system that is keeping us blissfully unaware of our oppression? Continental philosophies, thus, are going to branch out into areas like hermeneutics (Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricouer), artistic, architectural, and literary criticism (the Frankfurt School, Lukacs, Marcuse), or semiotics (Saussure, Foucault), or simple political-social theory (Arendt, Kristeva, feminism).
> 
> ...



Continental philosophy ignores metaphysics? The last time I checked it was majorly metaphysics, as oppossed to Analytical contributions. I would definantly take issue there in your post, most of what they do is metaphysical. If of course you define metaphysics in an analytical sense than I 'm sure you would discount continental philosophy. But there is a lack of criticism from Van Til and Dooyeweerd on Analytical issues, that does not mean that they do not apply (Bahnsen makes up for it on the Van Tilian side).


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## Philip (Nov 9, 2010)

> As far as Wittgenstien goes I don't think it is entierly fair to say that truth is a construction for him, unless of course you are trapped in a modernist mindset.



Again, he would say that truth is a function of language-games, which are communally agreed-upon. Now, these language-games may be our way of describing the world, but he would say that truth outside such a constructed language-game is a meaningless concept because meaning is a construct of language-games.



> Continental philosophy ignores metaphysics?



Post-Kantian continental philosophy does, for the most part. Since the gap between noumenal and phenomenal is unbridgeable, the study of things in themselves (aka: traditional metaphysics) is nonsense. Even the phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty is more epistemological-existential than metaphysical.

This is why early post-Kantian theology (Neo-Orthodoxy) describes God as "wholly other" so that our language about Him is equivocal.



> I would definantly take issue there in your post, most of what they do is metaphysical. If of course you define metaphysics in an analytical sense than I 'm sure you would discount continental philosophy.



They certainly would not say that they were doing metaphysics. Even Heidegger and Husserl, who come very close, are not (they claim) dealing with what _is_ but with the _phenomena_---what _appears_. Similarly, the critical theorists, structuralists, feminists, Freudians, etc are all doing social, economic, linguistic, or psychological analyses of the way we see things. They are not, though, dealing with, say, the existence of God, the mind-body problem, the problem of the one and the many, ontology, the nature of time (except as a social construct), etc. None of these folks think they are doing metaphysics---they view the task as futile.

Now, Van Til and Dooyeweerd (and to some extent the later Barth) are a different kind of post-Kantian altogether. For them, we can do metaphysics because God has revealed something of it to us. That is, the gap between noumenal and phenomenal has been bridged from the other side. This is revelation. They don't have a problem with metaphysics and yet are still broadly continental because they hold that Kant's noumenal/phenomenal distinction is only a problem for unbelieving thought.


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## CharlieJ (Nov 9, 2010)

I would add that a major brand of Christian thinking is re-appropriating metaphysics in the continental tradition. David Bentley Hart and the proponents of Radical Orthodoxy (John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, etc.) are revived Christian Platonists attempting to create a post-modern philosophy based on a participatory ontology. _La nouvelle theologie_ stemming from French Catholicism is reviving a realist Augustinianism. The best work interacting with these groups from a Reformed standpoint has been done by James Smith. Michael Horton has written some as well.


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## jwright82 (Nov 11, 2010)

P. F. Pugh said:


> Again, he would say that truth is a function of language-games, which are communally agreed-upon. Now, these language-games may be our way of describing the world, but he would say that truth outside such a constructed language-game is a meaningless concept because meaning is a construct of language-games.



Fair enough.



P. F. Pugh said:


> Post-Kantian continental philosophy does, for the most part. Since the gap between noumenal and phenomenal is unbridgeable, the study of things in themselves (aka: traditional metaphysics) is nonsense. Even the phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty is more epistemological-existential than metaphysical.



I don't know about all that, I think you are judging them from an analytic perspective, so if it doesn't fall into the neat categories of analytical philosophy than it ain't philosophy. But I will not press the issue for fear of getting off topic. You do make excellant arguments.

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CharlieJ said:


> I would add that a major brand of Christian thinking is re-appropriating metaphysics in the continental tradition. David Bentley Hart and the proponents of Radical Orthodoxy (John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, etc.) are revived Christian Platonists attempting to create a post-modern philosophy based on a participatory ontology. _La nouvelle theologie_ stemming from French Catholicism is reviving a realist Augustinianism. The best work interacting with these groups from a Reformed standpoint has been done by James Smith. Michael Horton has written some as well.


 
Yeah I love that book by Smith on this movement. It is very much in the stream of continental thought, for them they may not use words like metaphysics all that much but their themes were and are very metaphysical in nature. I like this movement for various reasons. There is deffinantly some paralells between it and some Dutch Reformed themes.


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## Philip (Nov 11, 2010)

jwright82 said:


> I don't know about all that, I think you are judging them from an analytic perspective, so if it doesn't fall into the neat categories of analytical philosophy than it ain't philosophy.



I absolutely think it's philosophy, but it's not metaphysics---they wouldn't call it metaphysics. Heidegger et al would take it as a huge insult if you suggested that they are, in fact, doing metaphysics. When Heidegger talks about being, he's not talking about what it _is_ to be (the noumenal) but about what it _means_ to be. In other words, his study of being is concerned with human existence as experienced, not as fact.


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## CharlieJ (Nov 12, 2010)

Do you think that Luther and Calvin contributed to the decline of metaphysics? I'm thinking especially of how Calvin says we seek to know God as he is in himself - quis sit apud se - but how he is toward us - qualis erga nos.


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## Philip (Nov 12, 2010)

CharlieJ said:


> Do you think that Luther and Calvin contributed to the decline of metaphysics? I'm thinking especially of how Calvin says we seek to know God as he is in himself - quis sit apud se - but how he is toward us - qualis erga nos.


 
I wouldn't say so. He and Luther are assuming that the medieval metaphysics project is valid. Both are assuming a pre-modern pre-Cartesian view akin to direct realism. What Calvin is saying here is that since God is transcendent and other than we are, we cannot have knowledge of Him apart from revelation, whether general or special.


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## jwright82 (Nov 13, 2010)

P. F. Pugh said:


> jwright82 said:
> 
> 
> > I don't know about all that, I think you are judging them from an analytic perspective, so if it doesn't fall into the neat categories of analytical philosophy than it ain't philosophy.
> ...


 
Yet Heidegger described the nature of things, being-at-hand. He used a german word for "being-there", Dasien, to describe human beings. What the continental thinkers did do was regect the common words in metaphysics, they don't really investigate being by itself but relate that more linguistically to some example of being. Nietzche, Heidegger, Sartre, Levanas, and Derrida all did metaphysics from a certian point of view. They were describing what is and how we relate to them. They just didn't use all the neat categories of the science of metaphysics. It is metaphysics when the continental thinkers talk about the end of metaphysics. In fact Heiddeger described Nietzche as the last german metaphysician, which people later used to describe Heiddeger himself. So I think you are right that they did not take up the particuler issues of western metaphysics, in fact they were critical of examples of western metaphysics, but the philosophical holists in that they did philosophy and all the different divisions of philosophy were done somewhat at one time.

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CharlieJ said:


> Do you think that Luther and Calvin contributed to the decline of metaphysics? I'm thinking especially of how Calvin says we seek to know God as he is in himself - quis sit apud se - but how he is toward us - qualis erga nos.


 
They may have but they were primaraly theologians and not philosophers. As far as Calvin goes Van Til, Dooyeweerd, and Vollenhovan all did metaphysics in a Calvinist way, so it could be argued that he contributed or influenced metaphysics in a way. Is not James Smith doing some metaphysics in a Calvinist way?


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## Philip (Nov 13, 2010)

James, the fact is, Heidegger et al are never talking about the world as it is (metaphysics) but the world as perceived (phenomenology). For them, the existence of God, for example, is uninteresting unless there is experience of God.


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## jwright82 (Nov 14, 2010)

P. F. Pugh said:


> James, the fact is, Heidegger et al are never talking about the world as it is (metaphysics) but the world as perceived (phenomenology). For them, the existence of God, for example, is uninteresting unless there is experience of God.



Is that why he called his work in "Being and Time" fundemental ontology? Why is that he used phenomonology to investigate the being of man, it was a means to an end? But I do like your dividing up of their work into decidedly Kantian terms. I just think it is oversimplified, but you could be on to a nice thesis on historical philosophy. My readings of continental thinkers was that they were always trying to go beyond Kant. In fact Heiddeger's work on Kant was criticized because he, if I remember correctly, tried to paint Kant out to be describing the essence or being of man, we both know that was wrong. Again I do not want to sound, look?, overly critical here I think you make excellant points.


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