🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov17.134024.1624@sol.cs.wmich.edu> brewer@sol.cs.wmich.edu (Steve Brewer) writes:
>In article <1992Nov16.122343.17501@husc3.harvard.edu> 
>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>>
>>If you don't feel that being bound by
>>logic is a *moral* obligation, would you still have any basis for a
>>reasonable expectation that your tooting your car's horn at a bunch of
>>Samoan Hell's Angels does not *mean* your informed consent for them to
>>peel off your skin and rip out your heart?  Do you have a glimmer of
>>understanding that your human rights are not worth the market value of
>>the chemicals that comprise your anatomy, *if* there be no such things
>>as matters of fact about meaning?
>
>It seems to me that this statement mixes several immiscible issues.
>Let us remember that human rights are based on a *committment* to 
>logic.  We shouldn't believe that logic is fundamentally 'right' or
>something.

If you do not believe that it is fundamentally right, you are not
committed to it.

  Most evidence I've seen indicates that very few people
>use logic or fundamentally rational thinking for most
decision-making.

Perhaps not explicitly, but they do use it implicitly (when they are
making sensible decisions).

>Miriam Solomon's paper on scientific validation suggests that the human
>system, though illogical, may produce better results because of the
>way knowledge construction occurs as a distributed system of dispersed
>cognitive entities with different perspectives.  The system provides
>better for both diversity in the common conceptual ecology (if I can steal
>that term) and less duplication of effort.

What is the frame of reference in which he draws this conclusion?
I'll bet that it presupposes logic.

>
>Furthermore, remember that a committment to logic is a *western* ideal
>that is not going to be applicable in many areas of the world.  In 
>many places, doing something seemingly innocuous *would* result in
>having your skin peeled off.  Do you believe that a simple lack of 
>commitment to western logic makes these value systems bad or wrong 
>somehow?  I don't believe that such a viewpoint is supportable.

Yes, it makes them wrong.  Similar views held widely in the West
itself are also wrong.

>
>-- 
>Steven D. Brewer    brewer@cs.wmich.edu     *     99brewer@lab.cc.wmich.edu
>                Department of Science Studies,  Western Michigan University
>"Kiu regalas per ^stonoj, tiun oni dankas per bastonoj." D-ro L.L. Zamenhof


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu