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Author Topic: I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning  (Read 15377 times)
prufrock
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« Reply #15 on: June 04, 2011, 07:21:04 PM »

I hope this doesn't seem pedantic, but I'd like to offer a reminder that there's a difference between inconsistency and hypocrisy; the former is an intellectual failing, the latter a moral one, which involves pretending to believe what one doesn't really believe, usually because it's in one's interests to do so.  It may well be that the editors are acting hypocritically, but it also may well be that they're just being inconsistent.  Similar reasons apply to lying: not every factual misrepresentation is a lie; the editor could simply mistaken or (self-)deluded, rather than intentionally uttering a falsehood intending you to have a false belief.

It's my sense that people (here, there, and everywhere) tend to charge hypocrisy when the evidence supports merely inconsistency.  If, of course, the editors are confronted with evidence of inconsistency (though you've contacted them with your concern, it's not clear that you've really presented them with evidence of inconsistency (along the lines suggested by hegemony)) and persist in it (because they don't want to admit they're wrong, because they don't want to go to the trouble to be consistent), then the moral judgment seems apt.
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