Date:        Sat, 08 Apr 95 23:29:46 EDT
Subject: Re[2]: PKF: Re: PKF a skeptic or not?


Hi, everybody!

Hmmm, I like SHELDON RICHMONDS's message, which reads:

>Which logic is used in this list to conduct discussions?  None in
>general?  Whatever logic each prefers?  How do individuals with different
>logics critically discuss each others views?
>	Feyerabend used the reductio to internally criticize and refute
>positions--i.e critical rationalism leads to relativism, and so is self-
>refuting.
>	What's the moral of the story?  Are all positions absurd, except
>the position that I have no fixed position?  I sting like a bee and dance
>like a butterfly.
>	Is the statement that I have no position itself a position?  It
>assumes that it is possible to live without assumptions, presuppositions,
>expectations, viewpoints...   This assumption that holding no assumptions
>is possible is actually empirically false.  All organisms have
>expectations or assumptions.  Hence, philosophers who attempt to live
>without assumptions are self-delusionary.
>
>OK.   I live with assumptions--but no fixed assumptions..  I change
>viewpoints on whim.  Today I am a critical rationalist, tomorrow a
>post-modernist, next day Zen...
>	All positions are absurd, even this statement itself that all
>positions are absurd is absurd...infinitely nested statements declaring
>the absurdity of the statement nested...
>
>	This position that all positions are absurd ...infinite nest...
>is invulnerable to all criticism.
>
I have implied many times on this list that I resent logicians, because
of their highmindedness,not to say smugness. In a real world where
everyone has A position (or many positions within the life span) it
is not logic that ultimately embodies rationality but ethics. The
absurdity or non-absurdity of any position is tacitly accepted on the
basis of ethical principles: and so the humankind exists in a
satisfactory agreement with itself.

On the other hand, the ability for logic is likely to be inborn, the
same way Chomsky and his followers (Pinker lately) have convincingly
proven that we all possess the inborn ability to produce language. I
am very happy to believe that we all produce logic and communicate
successfully with it innocently as the butterfly dances with the help
of its wings.