Sorry I have not been following this forum. My wife's mother lives in Biloxi Mississippi and we had not heard from her since Katrina so we had to go down there to check it out. If anybody tries to go down there, make sure you have sufficient food, water and fuel to complete a round trip (we did) because you won't buy anything down there. Her mother and brother are alive and well. We brought them water and some food and they can pretty well survive a month. (They would not come back with us – fear of looters.) Her mother's house is still extant but her brother's house is totally gone (he couldn't even identify his lot). At any rate, it's not a pretty sight.
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Originally Posted by Qfwfq
Try thinking of it this way DD, if a squirrel eats 'cause it's hungry, hunger is a reason for eating. It's very much a terminological issue. Apart from this I didn't find much that was enlightening.
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Yes, I understand exactly where you are coming from. I tried very hard to make myself clear but no one seems to have picked up on the issue I was trying to convey. It reminds me of that old cliché "there are none so blind as those who will not see".
I am probably wasting my time with this post but I will try again.
All of us have a world view from which we work when we think about anything. That world view springs from two very different phenomena: there is the instinctive component (which I have referred to as "squirrel decisions") and logical analysis.
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Originally Posted by Qfwfq
Yet, if people hadn't been naturally making an intuitive use of logic long before Aristotle, we wouldn't have survived. It's what we had instead of other things.
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It is exactly the presumption of "intuitive use of logic" which I am trying to direct attention to. That is, the presumption that their intuition has lead them to valid conclusions. It is exactly the validity of those intuitive conclusions which must be separated from the "examinable" logic we have come to think of as scientific.
What I am trying to bring to the forefront is that everything we think we know is a consequence of two very different procedures. The issue being that neither procedure can be ignored. We must, nevertheless make it very clear where the assumptions are being made. In my opinion, this is exactly where the whole philosophical approach goes astray: they do not make this separation.
Try reading my initial post again and see if you can grasp what I am trying to communicate.
Good Luck -- Dick
