On recept of the first draft of my Response to the Commentaries, BBS editor Jeffrey Gray wrote:
"I did not pick up sufficiently early the fact that some of the commentaries had passed over the threshold separating fierce criticism from ad hominem rudeness. In fact, this only came to my attention when I found that, in your Author's Response, you had (not surprisingly) replied in kind. We shall need, therefore, to make changes both in some of the commentaries and in your Response so as to revert to a properly scholarly debate."
to which I replied in turn...
"I feel compelled to make [a] comment on the issue of the acrimony and strong feelings expressed by several commentators and my responses to them in the original draft. I have followed your suggestions to the letter, and eliminated every emotional response that you highlighted for removal. But I am not personally convinced that strong feelings are necessarily inappropriate in a scientific paper. In fact, paradigmatic debates are often characterized by acrimonious and heated disagreement, and that acrimony is part and parcel of the valid debate over the issue.
When Velmans says that it is "absurd" that our skulls are larger than the experienced universe, he is speaking from the heart, being absolutely sincere, and eloquently expressing the real reason why most theorists have not even given this alternative any serious consideration. To moderate Velmans' comment to merely "incoherent" [as suggested by the editor] is to blunt the power of his emotional argument. It is unfortunate that many consider emotion to be the antithesis of reasoned scientific debate. Emotion is what makes us debate scientific issues in the first place. The entire enterprise of scientific discovery is motivated by an honest and heartfelt desire to get to the real truth behind appearances, so it is perfectly natural for the debate to become acrimonious when we perceive others to have taken a fundamentally wrong turn.
I recognize that some of the commentators got a little carried away, for example Booth who accused me of “phenomenological slapdash, if not downright dishonesty” and "rank self-deception" (my emphasis). But the debates between Gibson and the Gestaltists over this same epistemological question were equally vociferous and acrimonious, that emotional power being an essential part of the debate on so central an issue. For if we get this question wrong, it is sure to knock all the rest of our philosophy/psychology/neuroscience completely out of kilter, so it is perfectly appropriate to express the most powerful urgency to finally resolve this important question once and for all.
So for the record I must state that I prefer my original response to commentators, organized by commentator rather than by subject, and with the emotional and acrimonious statements preserved and celebrated as an essential aspect of the debate, over the more measured and sanitized response re-organized by subject that I enclose herewith. Nevertheless I defer to you as to which you consider more appropriate for a BBS article, and I will abide by your final judgement on the matter whichever you might finally choose."
Although Dr. Gray relented on Velmans use of "absurd", all other caustic hyperbole was eliminated from the draft published in BBS. In this web version however, you will find the original language in both the commentaries and my responses to them.