dya@unc-c.UUCP (06/27/84)
<MJ tix? Don't, if you aren't drawn, They keep $30 for a month to earn interest> shark!hutch (shark.856): >I love how Moffett casually dismisses the efforts of those men whose >lifework was to understand the nature of themselves and reality. >Who cares that they developed the framework from which our view of >the world arose. They are dead Greek persons and their ideas are >not worthy of any consideration. >even better, he dares us to demonstrate the existance of our minds, >while adequately demonstrating the lack of existance of his own. >(No :-) for fools like that! Is there a symbol for tears of pity?) >Hutch Some of the things which those same dead Greeks taught us include principles of logical argument. (or behaviour which is reinforced statistically by a set of rules which we find reinforcing to call "logic.") pStrictly speaking, fallacies of irrelevance or ad hominem arguments were not identified by the Greeks, but they (The greeks, not fallacies) provided the "groundwork" for a system of reasonably logical inquisition. Statements such as "They showed X while you showed a lack of your X" reeks of all kinds of illogical emittences (fallacy of four terms, ad hominem, etc.) One of the primary points made in "The Meno" was very nearly behaviouristic. It was Plato's assertion that (upon using "logic" to draw out certain mathematical proofs--which is questionable, since I think that Meno was "baited" and "rehearsed) if an imbecile such as his slave could respond correctly to "logical proof arguments" from the lowest level, then obviously everyone else could realise the SAME level of "universal" knowledge by appropriate training. (read: contingencies of reinforcement.) He went so far to say that these things were all known by the "soul" and it was up to the "mind" to draw them out through a system of conditioning. This "true" (obtained by rules of logic) knowledge was to be reinforced and the "false" (non-soul, or knowledge which appears to come from "nowhere" like art, poetry) should be suppressed by the political process so that more "true" knowledge would come from the soul into the mind..... Ahem. Now any 8th grader can identify most of the fallacies of logic in "Meno", but the point is that even these early Greeks were on to something considerably more useful than the Hebrews, who relied largely on "history" (phylogenic contingencies or reinforcement? ) in their inquiry of ontology and epistomology. Of course the Greeks didn't realise this, it took another 1,800 or so years before "physical behaviourists" such as Watson saw the light and decided to go down a different path other than Gestalt philosophy of (ugh)"mind." All that proper!gam was suggesting is that we back up lots further and try something completely different. After all, you don't believe in phlogiston or polywater, do you, although the eminent physicists and philosophers of the day certainly did !? Try reading "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" by Richard Rorty--just the first 50 pages or so (the last 100 where he gets into criticism of Sellars & Quine is mighty slow going.) If you really can follow what Rorty is saying, you might see the light, and realise that we are pulverising an already beat and dead horse by following dualistic philosophy of mind. These guys, like Plato, made great contributions; one of them which I am sorry didn't make it to the 20th century was to use systematic inquisitional methods on questions of ontology and epistomology (and religion...........). Isn't it strange how things have gotten turned around (the political process now advocating indirect suppression of these systematic methods.) David "Not a radical behaviourist" Anthony (decvax, akgua) !mcnc!urp!dya