[from Gary Cziko 971113.0150 GMT]
I know that I still have to respond to Rick's and Bill's comments about
evolution and psychology. But in the meantime I wanted to share this quote
from Pinker's _How the Mind Works_.
"Goals and values are one of the vocabularies in which we mentally couch
our experiences. They cannot be built out of simpler concepts from our
physical knwledge in the way "momentum" can be built out of mass and
velocity or "power" can be built out of energy and time. They are
primitive or irreducible, and higher-level concepts are defined in terms of
them" (p. 315).
Pinker is now on a national speaking tour to promote his book. If he comes
to an auditorium or radio station near you, this quote should be all you
need to get the debate started.
--Gary