667. Even
if I came to country where they believed that people were taken to the moon in
their dreams, I couldn’t say to them: “I have never been on the moon. – Of
course I may be mistaken”. And to their question “Mayn’t you be mistaken?” I
should have to answer: No.”
to ask
‘mayn’t you be mistaken?’ –
is to ask
– are you certain?
if you
answer – yes –
what is
the point of saying –
‘I may be
mistaken’?
to say
this is really no more than to pretend –
that
there is some doubt
if you
are certain –
there is
no doubt
but then
it might be useful –
from a
rhetorical point of view –
to
pretend doubt
to give
the impression –
of having
an open mind
you can
either be certain or uncertain here –
if you
are certain – the mistake is a pretense –
a bogus
concept – of use to the fraud
if you
are uncertain –
it
doesn’t come up at all
© greg t. charlton. 2010.
