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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: About Sir Eccles, etc. (this one is short!)
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Date: Fri, 11-Jan-85 18:27:51 EST
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Posted: Fri Jan 11 18:27:51 1985
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>> Lack of a right answer does not mean that we should go with a wrong one.
>> ---
>> 			Greg Kuperberg

> Ah, but you jump to conclusions.  No one mentioned faith.  Intuition
> is a better word.  Lack of a scientific answer does not mean lack of
> an answer.  It *DOES* mean, of course, lack of an answer we are likely
> to agree on.  There is certainly a vast subjective domain (in which
> reside soul, love, consciousness, and misc. things that go bump in the
> night) where such agreement is not necessary nor even useful. [GADFLY]

Intuition may be thought of as the "skipping over" of logical rational
processes by the brain to reach a certain conclusion.  Whether or not
the logical processes are simply going on in the background (subconscious)
or conditioned (the brain sees a similar pattern that it analyzed before
and jumps immediately to an assumed result, "instinctively") is an
interesting question, but the value of an intuitive idea lies, not in whether
or not it was ultimately resulting from logic, but rather, in its
applicability and validity.  If the resulting intuition is not logically
sound, then it's faulty.  Saying "intuition is a sound process" is like saying
"rain is a good thing".  Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.  It depends on
the validity and usefulness of the result.  Feeling something intuitively
doesn't necessarily make it right.  The great minds who use intuition to
achieve original ideas/goals are "great" for a reason:  the result of *their*
intuition bears fruit.  Perhaps THEY can "intuitively" know what intuitive
ideas are sound or unsound, and parse them out.

As the gadfly says, lack of a scientifically determined answer does not mean
lack of an answer.  But the "vast subjective domain" he described is just that:
vast and subjective.  The ideas and thoughts therein are subject to the
lack of hard-nosed objectivity they stem from.  The answers coming from that
domain are not verifyable, nor are they anything more than consistent with a
preconceived set of wishful thinking ideas about the universe.  With that in
mind, they're not worth accepting.

[This is more philosophy than religion, hence the cross posting.]
-- 
"Those without forms must appear, however briefly, at the Bureau's Astral
 Offices on Nooker Street..."			Rich Rosen    pyuxn!rlr