Koyaanisqatsi

Are you serious? Because he allegedly agreed with a colleague's diagnosis of the actual origins of something that no human had ever seriously contemplated before--neurosis--this somehow casts doubt on whether or not Freud had any kind of significant impact on the focused study of the human psyche?

Yeah, you're right. Once a Doctor makes (in your source's paraphrased assessment, no lesss) a bad diagnosis, anything he ever writes from that point on is useless. No, I'm sorry, how did you put it, "would have a very strong bearing on how likely it was that" he "actually unearthed any lasting truths about the development of the human mind."



The "facts" you quoted somebody else paraphrasing were entirely irrelevant to my post and to Freud's body of work.

Worse, your attempt to dismiss such a body of work with an example of somebody else's interpretation of a singular incidenct of bad judgement regarding one of the most complex issues of humanity--our psyches-- championed by Freud and his peers is disturbing to say the least.

Talk about ad hominen!

Beside the fact you demonstrated neither, your conclusion? Or did you just mean that to hang there like that?

You have erroneously extrapolated the term "quack" by the shoddiest of scholarship and then used the term to build a strawman that, ironically, had no conclusion.

To what end? And, more importantly, how does it relate in any way to my post? Or to Freud's theories, for that matter?

He was (in your source's assessment) wrong once about a subject no one had ever attempted to seriously explore--one so complicated that the debate he largely started decades ago is still raging--so he was therefore always wrong about everything he wrote? Or that his cocaine addiction somehow negates everything he ever wrote?

What?

Really? I didn't reallize one could discard the foundation of a building.

Fascinating. So, because Newton was "wrong" then perhaps it was his predilection for wine (or sugar) that is to blame?

Oh, wait. Newton wasn't actually wrong for his time, he was just the first one to really be credited with moving the bar higher.

Such a fine line...isn't it?

I took those same courses, only I didn't hear any "debunking" so much as I heard later theorists who stood on his shoulders augment and contribute to his theories with their own theories largely based upon what he had instigated.

Funny, eh?

And plenty of reasons to "believe" them all. What has belief got to do with this? My point wasn't about "believing" Freud; it was the observation that to dismiss his entire body of work because he was a coke addict was fallacious.

How? You established nothing of the kind. All you did was to quote somebody else paraphrasing hyperbolically an example of what could only be termed, subsequently, "misjudgement" on Freud's behalf regarding a subject that no one had ever seriously analysed prior to Freud's time (well, no one in the Western world, anyway, or in the manner that is historically attributed to him, shall we say).

I still don't see how this has any relevance to my post, by the way.

So a Doctor (theorist, really) who discovers certain properties of a drug and then uses those properties on himself is therefore to be discarded as a serious theorist with nothing to offer humanity?

You'd better toss out just about every single CD, film, work of art, or book you've ever read, then.

The concept of the Zero most likely came from middle eastern opium addicts, by the way, so you'd better toss out that one, too, yes?

Wiploc

Suppose a preacher tells us we are in the final days. Suppose he is then caught planting trees in his garden. Should we still believe we are in the final days?

Yes, if his theory stands alone, stands logically on its own feet.

No, if we were persuaded by the preacher's moral authority rather than his logic.

Examples:

1. Jimmie Swaggart's trafficking with whores seems to me an indightment of his moral theories. (I don't believe his theories stand without his personal moral authority.)

2. If someone above thinks a president's watching HeeHaw suggests he isn't competent in his office, then that someone probably doesn't think that president has established his competence by means other than posturing.

3. If someone told me that 3 + 5 = 8, the strength of my belief would be unaffected even if he was so depraved as to watch HeeHaw while trafficking with whores.

I notice that some of my examples don't deal with morals, but they still illustrate the principle.

Since I've never heard a moral theory that seemed to me logically compelling, I'll suggest that that none of them are, that all moralities are based (in part) on cognitive dissonance involving the amount of respect you have for the person you associate the theory with. If that is true, then it should always be significant when the theory's symbolic representitive is caught in a compromising position.
crc