[From Rick Marken (991016.1910)]
Kenny Kitzke (991015.1130EDT) --
aren't I enough for the group holding these radically
different and disturbing views about humans and their
nature and purpose?
It's not your _views_ about humans, their nature and purpose
that I find disturbing but, rather, your _approach_ to learning
about these things that I find disturbing. Your approach to
learning about humans, their nature and purpose is to check
your rationalizations about humans, their nature and purpose
against textual descriptions of humans, their nature and
purpose that were written by one of the most backward of
several cultures living in the Eastern Mediterranean between
about 1000 BC and 70 AD (the religious approach). My approach
to learning about humans, their nature and purpose is to check
the behavior of working models of humans, their nature and
purpose against properly obtained observations of humans, their
nature and purpose (the scientific approach).
What I find disturbing about the religious approach is that it
is based on a fundamental fallacy: that perception alone can
reveal what is beyond perception. A simple example of this is
taking a textual declaration (such as "I am the Lord thy God") as
evidence that there is a God; a perception (the declaration) is
taken to reveal what is beyond the perception (God). Another
example is taking a spiritual experience (such as hearing God
say "Kill Isaac" or feeling the presence of the "Holy Spirit")
as evidence of a Holy Spirit. Again, a perception (hearing
voices, feeling "the spirit") is taken to reveal what is
beyond the perception (Holy Spirit).
The scientific approach starts (although not always conciously)
with a basic observation: it's all perception. A corollary
observation is that perception alone cannot reveal what is
beyond perception. The scientific method is an extremely clever
(and successful) way of getting around this problem: you _invent_
(build) models (a type of perception), determine what the model
says you will perceive if you act on the world in particular ways
(determine the predictions of the model) and then act on the world
in particular ways and see if you perceive what the model says
you will perceive; if you do, then you stick with the model and
keep testing; if you don't, then you revise the model and keep
testing.
The scientific approach to learning about the world has given us
an extremely accurate approximation (still being refined,
of course) to what is beyond our perceptions of the inanimate
world; PCT is showing us that we can also use this method to get
an extremely accurate approximation to what is beyond our
perceptions of the _animate_ world (perceptions that include
humans, their nature and purpose). And we can do it all without
jihads, inquisitions or the other forms of human degredation.
RSM
路路路
--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates e-mail: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken/