It's a leap, Fool: a groundless, or merely logical, "possibility". Big whup. Peirce refer to such as "paper doubts". BiV is idle child's play. — 180 Proof

Yes, a possibility but I accept arguments that dismiss possibilities only if it's based on probability.

...and the fool appears. He wants the Twitter version, the answer to life, the universe and everything in 200 characters or less. He won't read, let alone think. — Banno

:rofl: Don't get upset!

Again, read the Tractatus, or at least take a look at the secondary literature. — Banno

:up: :ok:

By the way, you need to take opposition more positively.

That's not a limit on language, not a limit on what can be done, nor a limit on what can be understood, comprehended, felt, loved, hated... it's a limit on what can be said. — Banno

You're contradicting yourself. Language = saying.

6.5 When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it. — Banno

Without thinking of good or evil, [what was] show me your original face before your mother and father were born?

Ethics and Aesthetics are found in what one does, not in what one says. This is how the Tractatus leads to the Investigations, — Banno

This doesn't make sense. Saying = Doing. Disambiguate please.

I may have been a bit distracted in addition to having the wrong address. The pay just isn't that good. If you have complaints about the world you are experiencing going forward, I can give you the number for customer service. — Marchesk

Please do! Boy, do I have a lot to kvetch about.

In fact, I snuck in and wired up Ciceronianus's brain last night while they were asleep. The only problem is I wasn't sure of the address, so it might have been someone else. — Marchesk

Now I know why I'm feeling a little different today! :lol:

Fooled by the world? Not in a manner which has caused me to doubt that I'm here in it with everything and everyone else. — Ciceronianus the White

It's not such a big step to go from being wary of conmen and false friends to entertain the possibility of Deus deceptor (Descartes).

Statistics, in the modern sense of the word, began evolving in the 18th century in response to the novel needs of industrializing sovereign states. The evolution of statistics was, in particular, intimately connected with the development of European states following the peace of Westphalia (1648), and with the development of probability theory, which put statistics on a firm theoretical basis. — Wikipedia

The peace of Westphalia (1648) was a watershed event for Human Nature.

Pre-statistics, we couldn't tell precisely whether there was such a thing as Human Nature. In this period, all we could say were things like, some people are good, some people like violence, and so on but Human Nature, to be real, requires statements like most/all people like meat, most/people believe in a deity, etc.

Post-statistics, surveys on what people like/want/need/would do/etc. could be conducted with the statistical rigor befitting them, analyzed, and inferences could be drawn based on them. Human nature then became a topic in its own right. I suppose many such studies have shown that Human Nature exists as should be evidenced by how the majority (most people) conduct themselves given suitably designed scenarios.

I think we should have a reason to doubt the world before we start doubting it. — Ciceronianus the White

Excelente! There must be a reason to doubt. Have you never been fooled? I've been, countless times, in the most humiliating ways possible. Worst of all, I've often fooled myself, unknowningly of course but that still counts as a good reason to be skeptical. What sayest thou?

Wittgenstein's failing, if you ask me, was that, and this refers to the Tractatus, in ethics and aesthetics, he considered language to be suitable for designating empirical matters, but thought metaethical, metaaesthetic Good and Bad to be nonsense. So, you put the Good in view, music or falling in love, and then note its parts, features, the "states of affairs" then, he says, there is this residual that cannot be spoken: the Good of it. Weird, I grant you, this Good, but: it is no less sewn into the fabric of existence than empirical facts. It CAN be spoken, but speech (logic) is with all things qualitatively different from the actualities of the world (he gets this from Kierkegaard, whom he adored). — Constance

Indeed, anything meta necessarily involves essence. Thus, I believe, Wittgenstein's unwillingness to discuss such matters.

Pando (Tree)

A group of 47,000 [individual] Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) trees (nicknamed "Pando") in the Wasatch Mountains, Utah, United States, has been shown to be a single clone connected by the root system. — Wikipedia

We have to dig deeper to find the essence which Wittgenstein believes (mistakenly?) doesn't exist.

[1] Belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender.

[2] Belief characterized by self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought, especially when based on the assumption of occult qualities or mysterious agencies.

[3] The experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality.

[4] The belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience (such as intuition or insight)

[5] Vague speculation : a belief without sound basis

[6] A theory postulating the possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of ineffable knowledge or power — T Clark

What puzzles me about these various definitions is "self-delusion or dreamy confusion" and "a belief without sound basis" appear alongside God, Deity, Ultimate reality, Spiritual truth, Union, Knowledge & Communion thereunto.

Is God/ultimate reality/spiritual truth only accessible through insanity (delusion) and foolishness (confusion)?

If yes, then TheMadFool must be a mystic of the highest order. :lol: Jokes aside, the idea seems to be transcend logic. The only way I can make sense of this recommendation is to consider logic as just a tiny window our minds have opened unto reality, it operates only at the human scale, the world of things we can bump into so to speak. At scales smaller (atomic/nothing) and larger (cosmic/infinite), logic is useless, even a hindrance. Thus to grasp the full spectrum of reality, ultimate reality as it were, we need to break free from the grips of logic as we know it. God is sometimes viewed as infinity (Georg Cantor's absolute infinity). Has any philosopher understood nothing? :chin:

As for the Tao Te Ching, the last English translation that I read indicates the presence of mystical elements in it...I recall there's mention of infinity at a critical juncture in the book.

I used a simple and comprehensible language and I think my desciption of the topic is very clear. A professional writer, even just someone whose mother tongue is English, could have improved the wording, but this has nothing to do with the present case. — Alkis Piskas

The expressive power of language few can tap into. Rhetoric? An orator can touch the hearts of a hundred thousand people with one speech. Not an orator and you'll not be able to convince even one.

It appears morality is probably closer to other types of information than we realize. Which means we are correct about a lot of it and mistaken about some of it and which is which isn't always obvious. I'm not looking to lay out a prescriptive framework. I think that is where talk about human suffering really applies. Instead I was hoping to isolate a common thread in all acts that could be seen as immoral. Or point to some fundamental element. — Cheshire

I understand. This is what I wished to convey. There are two parts to this issue:

1. Sometimes there's agreement on the oughts e.g. theistic morality, utilitarianism, and deontology agree that murder/lying is wrong but, here's where it gets interesting, for entirely different reasons. It's like doing science - we have hard data (people don't want to murder/lie) but there are competing hypotheses (Bentham's, Jesus', Kant's, etc.) as to why that's the case. It's not a perfect match of course but there's a resemblance between moral theorizing and scientific hypothesizing that jumps out at you.

I don't know how far this is an accurate description of this state of affairs but it's as if we know what we should do but we don't know why? This makes for an intriguing possibility - morality is more of an intuition than a well-considered stance towards our fellow humans, animals, and life as a whole.

When I say intuition I don't mean to imply that morality has no rational foundation though. Intuitions are flashes of insight - they're, to me, necessarily giant leaps forward in thought and if one can jump like Hulk of Marvel comics fame can, all that the rational mind can see is where the Hulk (morality) leapt from (what is) and where the Hulk landed (ought). The intermediate steps are shrouded in mystery and our task is to find out what they are.

This squares with my own thoughts on morality being too far ahead of its time - take a look at our bodies and do a survey psychology and we discover that both our bodies and minds are ill-equipped/poorly-designed for morality to say nothing of the fact that the universe is utterly indifferent to our moral concerns.

It bears mentioning that morality is a product of the mind, that part of the mind that's capable of intuition & reason, the other parts being simply (the more animal-like parts) obstacles I mentioned above.

2. Other times we disagree on the oughts. This needs no explanation; after all, it's the biggest issue in morality. Why do we have different opinions on what is good and acceptable and what is bad and unacceptable. This is the Gordian knot and how do we solve it? If that's impossible how do we make sense of it.

I'll answer the second question because it's easier and helps us find closure. Every moral theory (theistic, utilitarianism, etc.) concur on some oughts (see 1 above) but there's a lot of dissonance on other oughts. In my humble opinion, the congruence in re oughts is due to what's common to these various theories and what's incongruent with respect to oughts is best attributes to the uniqueness (what's not common) of each.

As I said morality is likely an intuition and we haven't yet figured out their rational basis, the reasons for why we should be good.

An intriguing possibility that we might need to consider is these seemingly "different" moral theories could be different aspects of one single moral theory. You know, like how people, before Newton, thought that different forces were at play for an apple falling from a tree and for the heavenly motion of the planets. As it turned out, both were one and the same force - gravity. That many moral oughts are common to these apparently distinct moral theories suggests this might be the case.

Wittgenstein, it seems, was misled by superficial differences in morality - he failed to consider that there might be an underlying principle that connects an apple's fall and the revolution of the planets.

What doesn’t generate suffering. It’s a fallacy to say the Buddha ‘sees no value in things’ if by that you mean nothing has any value. — Wayfarer

That's what I suspected but that means emptiness/sunyata isn't nothing, right? For if it were, sunyata is as valuless as nothing and my argument makes sense. Just as it makes no difference for a dog whether the Mona Lisa exists or doesn't, for a Buddha, it matters not whether the universe, in all its splendor, is or is not.

This is the reason why Buddhists are so quick to distance themselves from nihilism as the two are so similar as per the above interpretation that it takes a keen mind to tell they ain't the same.

However, if the two are distinct ideas about the world, sunyata needs to be distinguished from nothing. Any ideas how this can be achieved? I'm all ears.

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." — Alkis Piskas

:zip:

↪TheMadFool Your example is on the mark albeit a rather idiosyncratic way of putting it. Have a read of Emptiness.

If…you can adopt the emptiness mode — by not acting on or reacting to the anger, but simply watching it as a series of events, in and of themselves — you can see that the anger is empty of anything worth identifying with or possessing. As you master the emptiness mode more consistently, you see that this truth holds not only for such gross emotions as anger, but also for even the most subtle events in the realm of experience. This is the sense in which all things are empty. When you see this, you realize that labels of "I" and "mine" are inappropriate, unnecessary, and cause nothing but stress and pain. You can then drop them. When you drop them totally, you discover a mode of experience that lies deeper still, one that's totally free.

But, note, this is written by a monk. — Wayfarer

Thanks! :up:

What do you suppose are the determinants of value? I'm running with the way I view emptiness as not necessarily a metaphysical concept but, I'm afraid, more mundane in that it's about looking at the universe with a I-couldn't-care-less attitude. The Buddha sees no value in things and thus to him, the universe, as awe-inspiring and wonderful as some claim it is, is nothing. Had the Buddha been given the choice between nothing and the universe, his response would be :meh: :yawn:

What underpins this attitude? What justifies it? Is it justifiable?

I see morality as a reaction to how things were/are. We're dissatisfied (dukkha) with the status quo and in that sense it's objective - there are certain facts/truths we're most displeased with.

From dukkha, arises a wish for how things can be; the so-called oughts. On that score, opinions are divided. Some believe we ought not outlaw homosexuality, others believe we should; some are of the view that eating pork is permissible, others eschew pork. There are many mutually contradictory moral injunctions to keep ethical philosophers busy for a centuries I suppose, trying to bring them all under one coherent system/theory.

Now, it's tempting to say that this proves morality is subjective - one possible explanation for differences of such kind. However, if you ask people following different moral systems - theistic, utilitarian, deontological, virtue ethics, etc. - you'll find that all of them are convinced and insist that their own systems are objective. In other words, though their are multiple systems on what is right and wrong, giving us the impression that morality is subjective, the fact that all such systems asssert that they're objective indicates a desire for if not that there is objective morality. It's just like debates/discussions on forums. Everyone wants to be right (objective) despite the fact that all are in disagreement (subjective).

In conclusion, how the world is is the objective side to morality and we desire to be as objective as possible with regard to how the world ought to be.

-Consciousness: the set of things an agent is aware of
-Conscious subjective experience: a set of all mental images created by the brain that an agent is aware of. This term will be abbreviated as CSE.
-Conscious state: CSE of something (e.g. CSE of happiness) — Hello Human

CSE + awareness of CSE = consciousness
Conscious state = The something CSE is about.

So a dog is a conscious state. The mental image of the dog is a CSE. When I become aware of the mental image of the dog (the CSE), I'm conscious.

I'm having trouble telling the difference between CSE and consciousness. What I feel is awareness in awareness of CSE is redundant. CSE = consciousness; forming a mental image is consciousness.

It's ok. Never mind!

Those who speak do not know. Those who know do not speak — Lao Tzu

Mighty interesting, once you compare the above to,

The limits of my language means the limits of my world — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Lao Tzu seems to be saying that there are things you can know but can't put into words.

Wittgenstein seems to be saying that what you can't put into words, you can't know. Socratic!

1. If you know then you can word it (False as per Lao Tzu, True as per Wittgenstein).

Contradiction!

Both Lao Tzu and Ludwig Wittgenstein seem to be doing a dance around, this is important, ineffables. The former claims that the ineffable is knowable while the latter claims that the ineffable is unknowable.

The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

Thank you. — 180 Proof

:brow:

Value is not identical with useful. some things, and some people (I count myself as one) are indeed useless and have purely decorative value. — unenlightened

But that's still use - as an object of decoration! So, called trophy wives come to mind!

I don't think so. The identification of self produces a distortion of values that enlightenment removes. But the extinction of desire does not extinguish values. The Buddha did not sit under his tree until he starved to death; he went about teaching the positive value of meditation and discipline to end suffering. — unenlightened

Good point but the Buddha's teachings were to prove that everything is sans value. Just consider the following scenario: Two men are on a walk together - one is a smoker and the other is not. Half-way on their leisurely trip they both see a packet of cigarettes on the ground. The non-smoker does nothing; the smoker thanks his lucky stars (a free packet of cigarettes), bends down and picks it up. For the non-smoker, it's as if the packet of cigarettes is nothing. The existence of cigarettes = the nonexistence of cigarettes. I'm aware of the possibility that there's so much more to sunyata than this but...that it could be interpreted in the way I did says a lot, no?

Where's @Wayfarer when I need faer?

del

Well, planting seeds of doubt is a far cry from what is being defended here. Look, if it were a seed of doubt "merely" then you would have recourse to to defend both sides with some margin of credibility. But there is none here — Constance

Skepticism is not contradictory - "...defend both sides..." All it states is given a proposition p, it can't be known whether p or ~p. In other words, the doubt (p/~p) can't be cleared. It definitely doesn't claim p and ~p which would be to "...defend both sides..." I can't stress this enough.

Phenomenology is the only wheel that rolls. — Constance

That's only true if you're certain that there's no objective reality. That is a luxury we can't afford.

sensible and nonsensible propositions — Constance

I believe that some philosophers were of the opinion that sensible propositions are those that can be verified by which I suppose they meant the proposition should be amenable to testing.

Just look at those absurd Gettier problems: they care nothing for P being a nonsense term — Constance

As I said, once a proposition is formulated, it's either true/false. Not nonsense!

:up: :ok:

Value — unenlightened

@Wayfarer
Hey unenlightened. I want to run something by you if you don't mind. I've been thinking about value recently and here's what I think is happening.

Take yourself for example. For a thief, your wallet is of value. For a patient with renal faliure, your kidneys are of value. For a barber, your hair (not your pubic hair :grin: ) is of value and so on. For someone who's not a thief, not a kidney patient, not a barber, you're valueless

Since you're unenlightened, I'd like to steer this discussion into Buddhist territory. What does valueless actually mean? If a thief finds out you're not carrying your wallet, you're basically nothing (valueless) to the thief. If you're bald, the same is true, you're nothing (valuless) to the barber and so on. Reminds me of sunyata - the Buddha, enlightened, gazes at the world around - from treasures of kings to the begging bowls of paupers - and observes that all are valuless/nothing/sunyata.

By the way, I recall a discussion betwixt you and me on value many suns ago. Do you have any memory of that? If you do recollect, even if only bits and pieces, do post it in a reply. If you wish that is.

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" — Alkis Piskas

I found it quite shallow — Alkis Piskas

Would a professional writer have done better - vocabulary, style, etc. - if you'd asked faer to write your post for you?

I didn't have to read the whole text to realize that a good writer was at work. Kudos to you!

I suppose you meant to get some feedback on the quality of the translation but if the clarity of the message and the way it was worded is any indication, I give you 9.9/10. Excelente!

The message :point: Cosmic Perspective!

I couldn't be wrong, right? After all, it's about perspective. I dunno! :chin:

Lemme guess

But Descartes escaped uncertainty with God. And it is not the rattling of a cage, as I see it. It is a revolution of the way we see the world. Science's assumptions about an independent and knowable exterior world is now completely untenable. Phenomena are now the true epistemic foundation, and so inquiring eyes turn here. The subjective world, largely ignored by empirical science, is now front and center, and meaning becomes first philosophy. — Constance

Well, you have a point but the error in judgment you commit is that now you've swung to the other extreme - to believing in subjectivity. This is not the intent/aim/goal of skepticism (Cartesian & Harmanian). What Descartes and Harman want to accomplish is to only, I repeat only, sow the seed of doubt in the garden of epistemology. This seed of uncertainty has germinated and is now a healthy (dose of skepticism) plant in full bloom but...it in no way diminshes the value of the other flowers (knowledge) that it grows alongside. If it does anything, it makes us unsure as to whether the flowers present are real or fake. That's not a bad thing if you take the time to realize artificial flowers are so well-made that it's impossible to distinguish them from real ones. If so, does it matter subjective or objective? They're identical insofar as our ability to tell which.

Skepticism isn't/wasn't ever meant to make you come to a decision. It simply pleads or sometimes demands that you take all claims to knowledge with a pinch of sodium chloride. That's all.

Not quite. Not that everything could be an illusion at all, not even in the running, not withstanding what analytic theorists say. Talk about illusions implies talk about what is not an illusion, for there can only be the one with the other. So from where comes the basis for something Other than what is there, in experience? Well, there is no basis, for anything you can imagine is purely phenomenological. It's not as if one can reach beyond phenomena into a "real" world, affirm what it is, then return with a thesis about illusions and reality.
Descartes opened to door to aporia, but did not walk through, cheated, as it were, his way out of the very doubt he posited. But here, we are more genuine to the assumption, and it is not merely doubt anymore; it is a theoretical impossibility to establish foundational knowledge of something outside the phenomenological world. — Constance

I see no difference between what you say here and what Descartes and Gilbert Harman are implying with their thought experiments. The idea is to rattle the cage of dogmatists (?) - grasp them by their arms firmly and shake them hard till the come to their senses or simply slap them across their faces until they come to the realization that certainty is the aporia in the sense that it's impossible.

Am I sure? you might ask. Exactly, I would reply! The answer is the question!

I think OP is an argument for spending time with children rather than having children — TheHedoMinimalist

You deserve an award for this, you know. All I can offer you is a :up: and :clap:

children — TheHedoMinimalist

school teachers — TheHedoMinimalist

In the educational setting in which I grew up, children were not taught how to learn and teachers were not taught how to teach. It's a miracle that we learned anything at all.

Maybe it's time to change the vat. Or its contents, as the case may be :wink: — Apollodorus

It appears both, oddly, amount to the same thing! :chin:

it is all guess work. — Apollodorus

That reminds me of wisdom of the crowd and also a forum member, can't recall faer name though! My memory is kaput!

The brain in a vat is simply Descartes' deus deceptor given a modern sci-fi makeover. The point seems to be everything could be an illusion. In Descartes' gedanken experiment, the only certain knowledge is the self as a thinker, thinking thoughts. In the brain in a vat scenario, the "self as a thinker" is the brain. Come to think of, Gilbert Harman (the originator of the brain in a vat thought experiment) must've wanted to convey that such a horrific possibility remains alive even if physicalism were true.

My position on normative ethics is (aretaic) negative utilitarianism, wherein 'harm suffering misery' of members of any sentient species (at minimum) are considered 'the moral fact' (which solicits help to reduce harm or prevent increasing harm). Given that, I answer:

1. Only insofar as it increases harm to someone.
2. ditto
3. ditto

The answers here are the same in large part because the criterion proposed in objectively grounded. Harm is the objective moral fact at issue: objective because it is specie member-invariant; moral because it entails a meliorative (helping) response; fact because it indicates a natural species defect that when stressed risks dysfunction or worse.

... why would it matter if morality was objective or not? Objectively wrong, or subjectively wrong, they don't care either way. Neither force people to do what's right.
— Isaac
Same with laws: why bother with legistlating or deterrent punishments since "neither force people to do what's right?" — 180 Proof

I'm impressed 180 Proof. Do you ever waste time? Rhetorical question!

Anyway, I'm particularly interested in negative utilitarianism because of one simple reason - reducing suffering seems more feasible than maximizing happiness. For instance, here I am in my room, typing away on a keyboard, expressing my thoughts, directed at you and I feel no pain, no suffering, I'm absolutely content with it all. I know, I know, my world, the world I described to you, is smaller than small; nevertheless, the point is I'm not suffering. I wouldn't say I'm happy though but the fact of the matter is I'm not suffering. Proof, wouldn't you say?, that negative utilitarianism has an attainable goal.

Maximizing happiness seems problematic though because I see no upper limit, no final endpoint to happiness. We're happy let's say but then happier we want to be. Lather, rinse, repeat (shampoo algorithm). It's only the finite nature of the means to happiness that people stop asking for more (happiness). I'm still a bit unsure about this so feel free to correct me.

I believe there's an ancient Greek counterpart to negative utilitarianism which you told me about in re the so-called tetrapharmakos you said I should adopt as a philosophy. I can't for the life of me recall that concept, it was in Greek. Mind sharing it with me once again for my benefit. Thanks!

It depends I think. — PulsarDK

Agreed! Evil is subtlety taken to stratospheric heights. You won't see it until it's too late.

Above mine too actually. My point was that Gödel apparently believed in an expansive view of the set-theoretic universe, and that his Platonism was probably motived by that and not by practical considerations such as its use in physics.

FWIW Gödel cooked up a model of set theory called the constructible universe, in which the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis are true. That shows that they're consistent with ZF.

So why not just adopt the axiom that the constructible universe is the true universe of sets? If you did that, AC and CH would be theorems and we'd be done. The reason this assumption is not made is that most set theorists believe that the true universe of sets (if there even is such a thing) has way more sets in it than just the constructible ones. Gödel apparently first believed that the constructible universe was the true universe, and later came to not believe that. — fishfry

From what I could glean from Wikipedia, a constructible set is one which can be, well, constructed via set theoretic operations (intersection, complement, mainly union I suppose). What would it mean to say some sets aren't constructible? Every set can be disassembled/broken down into its subsets and like a chemical compound, reconstituted back to give the original set.

The empty set? Is it constructible? { } U { } = { } but then that's circular. Aah. {1, 4, a} intersection {p, w} = { } but then how is { } made up of {1, 4, a} and {p, w}?

It's too complicated for me. I give up!

To be honest, I think they still be morons :lol: sometimes I don’t even understand some Nobel laureates (at least in literature). There are a lot of good writers who died without winning it like Baroja or Cheever. — javi2541997

Crème de la crème problem: Best is not enough. Best of the best, you have a chance of...not winning the Nobel Prize but only getting shortlisted. Those who actually win are, for all practical intents & purposes, gods!

Excuse the digression.

Back to the main page now. I'm approaching the Einstein paradox from a theistic angle (sorry @180 Proof but do play along). So, God reveals 2 scientific truths to us viz. the theory of relativity and the photoelectric effect. If you ask the general populace and the scientific community, Einstein should've got the Nobel for relativity. Yet, the world's best minds (?) - the Nobel Committee (1921) - disagreed and were unanimous (?) in their decision to award Einstein the Nobel for the photoelecric effect.

I'm very vague on the timeline of these discoveries - perhaps the world hadn't yet (1920's) got wind of how powerful the theory of relativity was/is relative to the photoelectric effect.

Anyhow, God wanted us to find out something. Between the two discoveries Einstein made, I'm at a loss which one is the clue and which one is the false lead. Perhaps both are clues, possibly both are dead ends? :chin:

What's odd is, people, including scientists treat Einstein's theory of relativity as the most astounding work of math and physics since Newton 3 centuries ago. Contrast that to what the Nobel Committee believed Einstein should be rewarded with the greatest honor a scientist can hope to receive, the so-called photoelectric effect.

One of two things is possible: either most people, scientists included, are fools or the Nobel Committee back then (1921) were complete morons.

I'm worried, if I'm even capable of such feelings, that one of the two parties vide supra are committing the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi (missing the point)! One party, don't know which, is barking up the wrong tree! I don't think we should be doing that. Do you?

Other possibilities exist of course but I'm not aware of any as of the moment!