🚀 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?
|>

Our lives are not worth the market value of the chemicals which comprise
our anatomy.  Life is snuffed out constantly, without sentiment and for
no reason.  Each of us will go this way.  The issue, as I see it, is not
to go about letting our stupid, little logical egos tell us how
important we are, but to *get* how absolutely unimportant we are, and in
so doing, come to cherish each breath that continues us, for none are
guaranteed and our continued existence is largely beyond our control,
and mighty logic is utterly powerless to change that.

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

Quite right.  I might point out that human rights are base on a
comittment to human beings -- not to logic -- the underlying motivation
for which is quite illogical.  The system of arbitration by which the
rights are adjudicated is "somewhat" reasonable.

Reason can never tell you what is right or important, and there is no
such thing as a rational decision or rational behavior, since these must
accept as a premise that a particular outcome or particular constraint
is 'good' or 'important' and this can never be 'proved.'  I am far more
prone to use 'intuition' or 'intelligence' than logic which is
frequently worthless.

Logic and reason are fine.  No need to start deifying them.

Paul Collacchi