RE: MD "Is there anything out there?"

From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Sat Jan 01 2005 - 12:39:37 GMT

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    Hi Ian

    Ian said:

    (1)
    Intellect (as in the higher order mind functions of "intelligent beings"
    like humans, from which emerge the socio-intellectual patterns of
    behaviour)
    Constructs (as in creates the only useful interpretation of)
    External Rationality (the intellect can ever know, even if "external
    rationality" actually does exist "out there")
    This I agree with.

    (2)
    Intellect (as in some transcendant concept of consciousness)
    Constructs (as in the stuff all existence is made of, in some
    fundamental
    way)
    External Reality (which independantly really exists "out there").
    This I suspect could turn out to be true, and in fact the intellects of
    (1)
    and (2) may even interact, but since we may possibly only ever see it
    through interpretation (1) it might be forever irrelevant. (But I'm not
    sure. It is this "intellect" or super-consciousness which I see as prone
    to
    god-like metaphors, which are understandable, even useful, provided
    people
    don't then mis-athropomorphise them into some super-being with a mind
    with
    intent and purpose, etc, in order to explain the teleological reason
    "why"
    anything.)

    Paul:
    What I meant was that an external reality that behaves in an orderly,
    uniform way independently of particular experience of it is an
    intellectual hypothesis which is extremely valuable both at a common
    sense level and in scientific practice. It seems to be a product of the
    success of inductive reasoning in coping with experience.

    I disagree with (2) because I don't think there is a transcendent
    intelligence.

    Regards

    Paul

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