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From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Logic based on different sets of assumptions (part 2 of 2)
Message-ID: <5216@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Mar-85 14:30:06 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5216
Posted: Tue Mar 12 14:30:06 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Mar-85 14:30:06 EST
References: <589@pyuxd.UUCP> <4898@cbscc.UUCP> <4899@cbscc.UUCP> <3878@umcp-cs.UUCP>, <649@pyuxd.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 52
Keywords: Occam, natural flow, objective

	Exactly.  (What?  Rosen agreeing with Torek?)  Faulty
	perceptive abilities would have resulted in
	starvation/failure/death.

This depends on how you define ``faulty''. Dogs have survived without
colour vision, and we have survived without the hearing range of a
dolphin and all of us see optical illusions sometimes. Is this
``faulty''?

	The more elaborate our perceptive (AND interpretive) systems
	become, the more the interpretation may be prone to error.  Our
	perceptive abilities, through our senses, would seem to offer
	us a fair picture of reality.  (Will those who deny this please
	step forward and explain 1) why they feel this way and

Ah, I feel this way because I have been working on ways to perceive
more and pay attnetion to what I am perceiving for years. I am much
better now than I was then, but still, on days like today, I can
remember other days when I both perceived more and understood more.
Perceptions offer us a picture of reality, yes, but I don't know
whether it is ``fair'' or not. It is the only game in town! I would
have to know reality itself better to be able to make that sort of a
judgement, and this I cannot seem to do without using perceptions.

	2) why they're typing a terminal if they don't believe it.)

Because it is a useful way of getting done what I want to get done. I
still don't know whether it is ``fair'' or not -- it is just the only
game in town.

Interestingly, your posing this question seems to imply that I have
free will -- that I chose to type at a terminal. if you made the same
choice, Rich, then do you believe that you have a soul? Or was that
question bogus from your point of view?

	It is only when our more complex brains engage in high-speed
	analysis (another reason we survived so well) about very
	complex things (like the nature of the universe), rather than
	rigorous analysis and acknowledgment that our interpretation
	may be based on wishful thinking, that we see a problem.

What makes you think that rigorous analysis is going to produce any
better results than high-speed analysis? What if the problem is in the
analysis itself?

Also, it is wrong to assume that religious thinkers were not rigorous
in their thinking -- in many cases they believed that they had evidence
that you would either deny, or explain differently, but
misunderstanding evidence is a flaw shared by many rigorous thinkers.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura