Re: Women's Ways of Knowing Study (Applied to physics instruction)?

["Michael N. Monce" <mnmon@conncoll.edu>]

On Sun, 28 Dec 1997, Leigh Palmer wrote:

> You have yielded to a human weakness. The political leanings of the authors
> should have no logical bearing on your acceptance of their previous
> arguments *per se*. You may, of course, attack their conclusive arguments
> based upon the logical continuity of those arguments with the previous
> arguments, but to change your acceptance of the previous arguments based
> solely upon a personal distaste for their ultimate implications is not
> logically defensible. Of course an argument based upon disproof by *reductio
> ad absurdum* may be constructed to attack the premises upon which an
> otherwise sound argument is based. However it is improper to use this method
> of proof while there exists at least one fallacy within the argument itself.


	You're right, of course.  I should have taken the time to get the
book out again and look at that particular passage.  The passage I
mentioned sticks in my mind as a counter-example to their previous
conclusions.  I then, as you point out, linked that with their more 
general political comments.

				Mike Monce