Pascal's rules of metatheory

Balder started an IPS thread on this which contains the manifesto and some comments from the Facebook discussion on it. A couple of my comments follow.

There are various and sundry meta-theories. And no one of them covers all the ground, nor can it. Even if one, or a group, were to consider all extant meta-theories available. For that one or group would still interpret all meta-theories through its own pet meta-theory. That's the whole point of it takes a village, or the next Buddha is a sangha. Granted, I know this can easily be turned into a variant of the old meme green meme BS, which is inherent to the kennilingam meta-theory; if you don't agree with this meta-theory as transcending and including all others then by definition you are MGM. Layman includes this specious argument in his manifesto calling it MOA-1, and it's what Trish first noticed. And which is but one problem with using kennilingus as the base from which to build the meta-theory. But what do I know? I'm MGM or MOA-1, but only to a kennilinguist.


I will grant though that Layman does include quite a number of things from our forum that are not within kennilingus. To say though that they are implied in the latter, even if not readily apparent, is stretching credibility. Many of those forum points came from other meta-theories, and hence we have been affected (infected?) by those ideas to notice the gaps in kennilingus. And even though we've expanded a general integral meta-theory, it's still flavored by those influences and missing other elements from yet other meta-theories, like those that Edwards has assiduously and academically elucidated. Though I am in agreement with many other points in the manifesto, since they were either taken from our posts here and/or are Layman's variations on points we've long made here.