NoHolyCows
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A “full-account” is not a feeling; it’s an explanation that makes the observed features more likely than rival explanations. To count as a full account here, the emotive hypothesis would have to predict and explain the concrete operations the letter exhibits—identifying opponents, contrasting gospels, anathematizing rivals, instructing the audience—without invoking polemical function. You have never specified such a model or shown that, under it, those operations are more probable than under a polemical reading. Until you do, “emotive full-account” is a bare possibility, not an account, and it cannot displace a classification grounded in the text’s observable operations.
Private demonstrations of your inner experience are not public discriminators. The issue is intersubjective evidence available on the page. If your proposal explains the data better, spell out the textual predictions and show they’re borne out. Appeals to what you could “show” me subjectively are epistemically irrelevant to a public claim about the letter’s function.
That’s an ad hominem and it doesn’t touch the claim. Classifying a document’s rhetorical function uses publicly checkable features so outsiders can evaluate it regardless of anyone’s inner states. I am addressing the relation of expression to function by pointing to the operations the text performs; impugning my motives doesn’t alter those operations.
Recognition follows specification. If “emotive full-account” is more than a label, provide the concrete mapping from emotion to each observed polemical act and show why, under that mapping, those acts are better expected than under a polemical model. Until then, nothing is “blinding” me; you simply haven’t furnished an account that does predictive work.
An appeal to authority is fallacious when the authority’s say-so substitutes for evidence. That is not what I’m doing. Citing shared method is not deference to persons; it is deference to procedures that produce intersubjective checks. In physics, medicine, law, and history, conclusions are warranted by observations and rules of inference, not by who asserts them. My claim rests on the letter’s observable operations and how they differentially support a polemical classification; no personal authority is invoked or required.
No. Citing a method is not deferring to a person’s say-so. In physics, medicine, law, and history, claims stand only insofar as anyone can rerun the test, re-examine the chart, or re-read the record and get the same result. That is intersubjective checking. It binds regardless of who performs it. Appealing to reproducible procedures is the opposite of an appeal to authority.
Incorrect. I am not saying “trust X because X said so”; I am saying “use criteria anyone can apply to the same text.” My claim about Galatians rests on publicly checkable operations in the document, not on anyone’s credentials.
Agreed. Emotion is present in the letter; acknowledging it does not convert polemical acts into non-polemical ones.
Your private experience is irrelevant to classifying a text’s public function. The classification turns on features any reader can verify in the document.
Then specify the account for this text. A “full-account” must show that the emotive model predicts the concrete operations we observe here better than a polemical model. You have not done that.
Again, subjective experience elsewhere does not decide this case. Provide text-bound predictions and show they fit this letter better than the polemical reading.
Yes. Paul argues. That coexists with his polemic; it does not cancel it.
Irrelevant to the classification point. The question is what the letter does on the page, not your inner states.
Possibility by itself does no evidential work. Competing models must be compared by how well they predict the observed features of this specific text. The polemical model fits the naming of rivals, refutation, directives to the audience, and the use of an origin claim as a reason. “Emotive” as a bare label does not overturn that fit.
Correct that we compare possibilities; wrong that uneliminated bare possibilities block classification. We select the hypothesis that better accounts for the observed discriminators. Without a superior emotive-only account for these discriminators, polemical function remains an actual classification, not merely a conceivable one.
That is self-contradictory. If polemic is actual, it is not blocked. And a “viable possibility” does not block an actual classification grounded in observed operations unless you show that your alternative makes those operations more expected. You haven’t.
It is not inert. In Galatians the origin claim—“not from man … through revelation”—is used within the polemic as warrant against rivals. That has immediate consequences for public assessment: a premise used as warrant bears a public burden. Either it is supported by discriminators or it carries no weight as a warrant. That changes how we read the anathema, how we weigh rival claims, and how we trace authority in the movement. Calling this “inert” ignores those concrete effects.
It is more than “possibility.” When a document names rivals, refutes their claims, invokes an origin warrant against them, and directs an audience to reject those rivals, those operations instantiate polemic. That is how public classification works across disciplines: the category is defined by observable functions; if the functions are present, the category is actual in that text.
A merely “viable” alternative does not block an evidence-based classification. In public methods we compare models by fit to the observed operations. “Emotive-only” does not better predict naming opponents, argument against them, anathematizing contrary messages, and using a claimed non-human origin as a reason to trump “man-taught” rivals. Without superior explanatory fit, the alternative remains idle.
You keep reasserting “not established” as if establishment required eliminating every live alternative. It doesn’t. It requires the best publicly checkable account of the operations we actually observe. On that standard, polemic is established.
You’ve shifted from evidential practice to an all-possibilities logic that no empirical field uses. Texts are classified defeasibly by observed discriminators, not by proving uniqueness. Your “full-account” remains an assertion until it shows why emotive-only predicts the same concrete moves better than the polemical model. It hasn’t.
Emotion and reasoning are present; that never was in dispute. They coexist with polemic; they do not cancel it. The letter’s observable acts—opponent identification, refutation, boundary-marking curses, and an origin warrant deployed against rivals—are polemical functions. Recognizing those functions is not negated by the simultaneous presence of emotion or argument.
Overlap is conceded; elimination is not. To “envelop” in a way that displaces polemical classification, you must show that emotive-only explains the directives, the curse formulae, and the origin-claim-as-warrant better than the polemical account. You haven’t supplied that account.
That is factually wrong about effects. In Galatians, those polemical acts are how Paul demarcates community membership and rejects the rival platform; they fix burden of proof by invoking “not of man … through revelation” against emissaries who trade on Jerusalem authority. That is not redundant or inert; it is the mechanism by which his audience is told whose message to follow.
Nothing in the record demonstrates that. The polemical elements directly contribute to the letter’s practical outcome: they authorize Paul’s gospel over “man-taught” rivals and instruct the audience to treat contrary “gospels” as anathema. That is a functional contribution by any public standard. Calling it “inert” is just repetition of a claim already answered and contradicted by the text’s observable operations.
What is wrong is your treatment of modality as a veto. In any public method—history, law, or science—uneliminated logical alternatives do not prevent actual classification when the discriminating features are observed. If a text exhibits the operations that define a polemic—naming rivals, refuting them, invoking an origin claim against them, directing the audience to reject them—then the polemical function is instantiated in that text. Possibility talk does not overturn that observation; at best it proposes a different model, which must fit the same operations better. Yours does not.
That is precisely the modal mistake. “Viable alternative” blocks exclusivity claims, not ordinary actual classifications based on better fit to observed features. Courts convict without eliminating every logical alternative; scientists accept working hypotheses without proving uniqueness. Likewise here: the polemical model explains the concrete operations on the page; your “emotive-only” alternative does not out-explain them, so it does not block classification.
There is no ambiguity in how I’m using it. “Is polemical” means “the document actually performs polemical operations in this passage.” It does not mean “only polemical,” nor “always and everywhere polemical,” nor “merely possible.” The operations are observable. Their presence fixes the classification for the passage in question.
There’s no ambiguity in how I’m using it. “Is polemical” means “the passage actually instantiates polemical operations”—naming and attacking rivals, invoking an origin claim against them, and directing the audience accordingly. It does not mean “only polemical,” and it does not mean “merely possible.” When I mean possibility, I say “possibly polemical.” When I mean coexistence, I say explicitly that polemic and emotion can be concurrent. Because those discriminating operations are present, the classification is actual for the passage in question. That resolves the semantics and leaves the evidential point intact: once the origin premise is used in that polemical move, it enters public evaluation and requires public discriminators to carry any warrant.
Emotion and polemic are not exclusive, and you acknowledged that. Therefore the mere viability of an emotive reading does not displace the polemical function when the discriminators are present. To displace it, you would need to show that “emotive-only” predicts the naming of opponents, the anathematizing of contrary messages, and the use of a revelation-claim as a reason against “man-taught” rivals better than the polemical model. You have not provided that account.
You are attacking a claim I did not make. I never said only an appeal to authority enters public space. I said: once Paul uses an origin premise—“not from man … through revelation”—as part of a public argument against rivals, that premise is subject to public evaluation by discriminators. Public space is already there; using the premise as warrant puts it under public evidential norms. Your reply changes the subject and leaves the evidential point untouched.
Correct, and nothing I’ve said depends on denying that. Any publicly circulated text is in public space by virtue of being public. My point is narrower and strictly evidential: when a speaker places an origin premise into the argumentative chain—“not from man … through revelation”—that particular premise is being offered as a reason against rivals. The moment it functions as a reason, it must meet the standard for public warrant: show observable discriminators that make the data more probable on that premise than on its competitors. “Publicly uttered” and “publicly warranted” are different categories; the first is about venue, the second is about evidential standing. Paul’s letter is public regardless; his origin claim carries no public warrant unless it is backed by public discriminators.
Agreed, and that concession leaves my argument untouched. Entry into public space is trivial; it attaches to any open communication. The question at issue is what, inside that public communication, purports to do justificatory work. In Galatians, Paul not only reasons; he also deploys an appeal to revelation to trump man-taught rivals. That is an appeal to authority about origin. Once used as a warrant, it is answerable to public tests. If no discriminating observations are produced—nothing the world would look different on if “revealed, not of man” were true—then that premise has no evidential standing, even though the letter itself remains public. His purely human arguments can be evaluated on their own merits; the origin claim cannot carry authority without public discriminators.
NHC
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