Ecmandu has declared that post to be his debate finisher. I have no expectation that he’ll actually keep his word in that regard, but here are my tentative closing remarks.
First of all, it should be said that Ecmandu's point about specialization works against him. He has said repeatedly that as we all have our limitations, we all have our specializations as well, and then he's gone on to describe his. If Ecmandu is right and we all have specializations to go along with our limitations, one could just as easily say [i]that nobody is a fool[/i], including Ecmandu. The vision he paints of a world in which we are all on par because we're all good at some things and bad at others is a world in which we're all uniquely gifted. To take from this 'we're all fools' would be arbitrary cynicism, or in this case, a hollow attempt to win a debate through twisting rhetoric instead of actually making a point. Now, I think Ecmandu's portrayl is fundamentally flawed and I will show why, but it's important to note that even if you accept his description of human intellect, his argument undercuts his position. What he's shown is not that we're all fools, but that the distinction between fool and non-fool can't be made, and so the term has no meaning at all.
But enough of that. Let me show why his portrayl of human intellect and foolishness is wrong, not just undercutting of his position.
Imagine Leonardo da Vinci is put into a position of having to shoe a horse. He's never done this before, and has been provided no guidance. A farmer, and a friend of his watch as he flouders, almost gets kicked in the face. Perhaps he uses the wrong kind of nail. Hell, perhaps he's unaware that nails are even required. All in all, he makes a mess of things.
Says the farmer: "This man is clearly a fool."
Says Leonardo's friend: "Actually, that's Leonardo da Vinci, the accomplished painter, architecht, inventor, sculptor, engineer, mathematician, biologist and cartographer."
If the farmer believes da Vinci's friend, he will of course [i]immediately realize his error.[/i] Why? Two reasons. For one, he can remember his own first time shoeing a horse, and would know immediately how difficult it would be if one wasn't given any guidance. For two, he knows that a person with all those accomplishments is no fool. There's simply no comparison between being a stupid, idiotic person (as 'fool' has been defined for the purposes of this debate), and finding oneself in a situation in which they have no expertise. And indeed, even in the above situation we'd expect da Vinci to figure out for himself how to shoe a horse faster than some other, random person put in a similar situation because daVinci is a genius, [i]and some people merely figure out new things faster than others.[/i] That's an aspect of foolishness Ecmandu completely ignores- it's not just a question of what you do and don't know, it's a question of how quickly you can come to learn something new if you must.
With this understanding, Ecmandu's point works against him in another, more important way. What we know about Ecmandu is that he's hideously bad at debate, reading comprehension, and philosophy. And even then, what do we really know? The evidence is circumstantial- it's always possible that he's faking his incompetence in order to troll, or to teach some greater lesson. For all you truly know, I'm Ecmandu, and I'm playing some great public game with myself. But let's put that aside, and take his behavior at face value. What we see of him here doesn't make him a fool any more than da Vinci for being unable to shoe a horse. Ecmandu may be a whiz with numbers who simply can't express himself- indeed he has claimed this. Perhaps if only you saw him dance, or paint, or sew a wound, or fix a car, you would be stunned by his acumen. He could be knowledgeable and talented about a great many things, and average at a great many more. All the evidence we have of Ecmandu's 'foolishness' shows only that he is [i]incompetant[/i] at a particular narrow skillset- the skillset required to argue about philosophy on the internet. That certainly doesn't meet the definition of "Fool" I set in this debate. And however the reader or this debate may define "fool", I highly doubt "being bad at one thing" qualifies. There is simply not enough information to conclude "This man is a fool".
As far as I can tell, Ecmandu hasn't attempted to address my point about his contribution to philosophy, so this section will be shorter, and basically a repeat of what I've said elsewhere. I maintain that Ecmandu has a worthwhile contribution to philosophy to make by being a bad example of it. He illustrates quite well how inattention to detail, poor writing skills based in a lack of education, stubbornness, and presumption of one's own expertise where it does not exist can lead to bad results. Reading his words can serve as a 'come to Jesus' moment for similar armchair philosophers with a tendency to spout off without having done their homework. In fact, I have good reason to believe that [i]this has actually occured.[/i] The only argument Ecmandu has given about his lack of contribution to philosophy has been that, if there have been an infinite number of souls, then everything has been said before, and thus his contribution cannot possibly be original. This fails in three fundamental ways.
First, he's given us no reason to believe that there actually have been an infinite number of souls in the past, much less souls capable of making philosophical statements. He hasn't even bothered to say what a soul is. One simply has to take it for granted that there have been an infinite number of monkeys typing on keyboards in order for his argument to even get off the ground. Considering this goes against mainstream physics which asserts the universe had a beginning a finite amount of time in the past, the fact that he has no argument for his position is an astounding gaff for a debate such as this.
Second, even if there have been an infinite number of souls spouting philosophy, those souls are still unique. Ecmandu as a male homo sapiens living in the 21st century saying what he says has different and unique implications to the Lobster Queen of Betelguese IV saying the same thing 75 million years ago. Questions of "Why now? Why him? Why not somebody else? How else might Ecmandu resemble the Great Lobster Matriarchs of old?" will have answers raised only by Ecmandu's unique utterances, and those answers may themselves be a unique contribution to philosophy.
Third, and most importantly, the uniqueness of Ecmandu's philosophical ideas has[i] nothing at all to do[/i] with the contribution to philosophy I allege that he has made. He made his "nobody has said anything unique" argument before I wrote my first post in this debate, and has simply stuck to it without seeming to acknowledge it's irrelevance to my position. He thinks he is concerned with the "macrocosmic" scale, and I with the "microcosmic" scale, as he calls them. But even if he's contributed no unique [i]philosophical ideas[/i] to the universe in either sense- even if it is as he appears that his greatest idea was accidentally lifted from [i]Brave New World[/i]-, that doesn't detract from my position at all. In fact, it makes my position stronger- one of the ways in which Ecmandu's philosophical endeavors serves as a warning to the rest of us is in what can happen when you claim to have an original idea when you haven't done the background reading first.
So in conclusion (unless and until Ec goes back on his word and writes a new ‘debate finisher’), Ecmandu’s depiction of foolishness renders the word meaningless as opposed to showing that we are all fools. In reality, a person is not a fool merely because they lack a specialization. Ecmandu can’t be concluded to be a fool because all we know about him is that he lacks one particular skillset. Ecmandu makes a worthwhile contribution to philosophy by demonstrating how it ought not be done. His argument about originality on a universal scale doesn’t address this in any way, is inadequately supported, and doesn’t entail his conclusions.