[From Kenny Kitzke (2000.27.1000)]
<Bill Powers (2000.26.1828)>
<Mary and I think there is something like a Cosmic Cat and a Cosmic Dog.>
"I" am in conflict. "I" don't know whether to laugh or cry.
<Anybody seeing this would
immediately know what was up: the dog was willing the child to pick up the
ball and start a game. That's what I mean by the Cosmic Dog. I've seen a
hundred dogs do it who couldn't possibly have ever seen each other.>
Surprising that you would conclude that any other person would "know" what
you perceive you "know" when perceiving the same event. Is it really any
wonder why so few scientists have accepted PCT/HPCT as an explanation of
human nature? You mean that dogs can easily do something they have never
seen or learned? What could explain such dog nature? Is it their inherent
mystical reorganization system? Something their genes learned through the
evolution bush? How would we really ever know?
Could Cosmic Human do this too, and perhaps even to a far greater and more
sophisticated degree than Cosmic Fido? Science needs to find answers to such
questions to gain credence.
<Well, I think there's probably something we could call the Cosmic Human,
too, only you'd have to be a Martian (make that an Alpha Centaurian) to
recognize it. I suppose that anthropologists and ethnologists try to study
the Cosmic Human, but I don't think they really can do it because they
can't see _themselves_ from a sufficiently external point of view.>
Assumptions, assumptions and more assumptions to form speculations of how you
perceive such things. Could they seem different to another Cosmic Human?
Would their perceptions be any less credible than yours? I guess it is just
a Cosmic Human thing to guess. But wait, "I" can't tell. "I'll" need to
phone a friend. AT&T, get me an Alpha Centaurian on the line, before "I" can
perceive my final answer.
<The
Cosmic Human is the set of all properties that have evolved along all the
kinks and turns of the evolutionary bush that ended up with us, and among
those properties are the things we value so basically that they determine
everything else.>
Speaking scientifically, of course.
<We've _learned_ to value these things, because learning to
value them is what got us where we are, wherever that is.>
You mean like the dog _learned_ to do what you "know" to be the dog starting
a game with a child which it must "value," even though the dog may have never
seen another dog do that or have experienced the "value" of playing games
with Cosmic Humans?
Is "value" a technical term in PCT/HPCT which I have missed? Until you have
some answers to "whatever that is," "I" continue to have reservations about
just how much you, or any other Cosmic Human, has discovered about human
nature.
Let the search continue. Perhaps it will be found in the human "will,"
whatever that is.
Just playing with you, Bill. A Cosmic Devil advocate game, to be sure, but
"I" had a tough week in the stock market and apparently have some intrinsic
error I need to solve by some random reorganization. 8-))
I'll be eager to hear more about what the group thinks about these Cosmic
Humans at the conference.
Kenny