re your latest communication, which, unusally for me, I shall quote in full
since I must do justice both to your personal politeness and to the
complex, but I believe futile, development of your theme.
>Once again, thanks for the thoughtful reply. A question it raises
>for me, however, involves the very nature of, what Jerome Bruner
>described as GAK's most important contribution, i.e., the notion of a
>"personal construct". You said:
>
>> Well okay, what I was trying to convey was that both Neimeyer's and
>> Gaines & Shaw's communications were constructive, while yours was
>> anything but.
>
>As I construe the notion of a "personal construct", one of the
>considerations that distinguishes a "personal construct" from the
>classical notion of a "concept" is that the "personal construct"
>involves a specific contrast or opposition as opposed to universal
>contrast or opposition or simple negation, that is to say, in the
>context of communications on the internet, a person may assign an
>internet communication to either a constructive pole or a boring
>pole, or an insulting pole, or any other specific contrast or
>opposition but not all of them at once. From this point of view, the
>contrast to "constructive", by definition, cannot be everything else
>other than constructive; it must be something specific, and each
>person might invoke a different contrast. Am I missing something?
>
>Joe Whitehurst
This last bit is, as far as I'm concerned, pure defensive
intellectualisation. You choose to focus on my words "anything but" and
build on it a load of old cobblers depending on a contrast between
construct and concept which I'm sure you realise is irrelevant to the
intent of my last communication.
<rep:>Am I missing something?
You bet. The need to summon up the grace to apologise to Neimeyer for the
unwarranted attack on his hard work with the Journal. Fer chrissake, most
of us (all right, me for one!) have made mistakes in our communications on
the 'net, and have said "Gulp! Sorry, I blew it!" I think you should.
And then if you go to the Barcelona conference and we meet face to face,
I'll feel stupid for pursuing you on this issue for so long and we can get
pissed together. Yes?
Kind regards
Devi Jankowicz
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