In a message dated 6/12/12 3:59:19 PM, [email protected] writes:
> On Jun 8, 2012, at 2:09 PM, Tom McCormack wrote: > > > "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two > opposed > > ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function" > Dammit, Michael, didn't write that, Fitzgerald did, and I make that clear every time I quote it. And I condemn it, in good part because of the ambiguity of his phrase "to hold two opposed > ideas in mind at the same time". Michael asks: > > Why is this so hard to do? > Why is WHAT so hard to do? As I wrote to William, "FSF's line is soupy as hell, but it seems unlikely he was so fatuous that when he said, "hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time" he merely meant "realize there are two possible outcomes"." If, with "to hold in mind" he meant the likes of "believe", and if with "opposed ideas" he meant mutually contradictory (I believe there are angels and I disbelieve that there are angels); I think any first class intelligence would find it hard simultaneously to "believe" two opposed ideas. Michael writes: "Many people (as I understand) believe in both the Big Bang and evolutionary development of the universe, on one hand, and the Creation, on the other. I suspect that many people of varyious rates of intelligence just suspend their decision, agree to a truce, and hold both ideas simultaneously." Let's put aside the views of those who believe the Big Bang theory (including Darwinian theory) but also believe those were the methods god chose when started things, and thus there's no contradiction between Big Bang and creationism. Let's say a first rate intelligence sees mutual contradiction between the two. Then I think he could not "hold both ideas simultaneously" if by "hold" you mean "believe". If by "hold" you mean simply the likes of "understand", your suspicion that many people just suspend their decision, I agree -- but that's a platitude. At one time, LIGHT was analyzable as both waves and packets. Many scientists who understood both hypotheses had no compunction about withholding a decision. 'Belief' is yet another word that has behind it countless foggy notions. My own foggy notion is such that I think belief is involuntary: if on the evidence at hand, you believe such-and-such, it's because you can't help deciding the way you do. Nor can you help suspending a decision, if that's what you do. Pascal's wager always struck me as ridiculous, a subterfuge. Either you believe in some kind of god, or you don't. It's an insult to any god's intelligence to figure all you need do is ACT as though you believe, and He'll think you do believe, and that way you'll gain heaven (which you may also have no surety of its existing, but what the hell why not act as though you do.) > > Michael writes: > "The implication of F's statement is that..." > I respond: > Michael, just as I feel you shouldn't so quickly ask, "Why is that so > hard?" about an idea (FSF's muddled notion) when none of us can be sure what > his notion is, I don't feel you have much standing to assert the > implications of that statement. > > Michael writes: > "Justifiable homicide" as a legal and moral doctrine represents a way to > negotiate two seemingly contradictory notions (upholding life and killing > another person). > They don't seem contradictory to me. For me, killing another person would usually be unpleasant. But would I have gladly killed Hitler or any madman bent on blowing up New York City? Yes. I don't accept the suppressed assumption that either all killing is "bad" or none is. I eat some foods, but not all, go to see some movies, but not all. > > Rarely are we called to make an irrevocable decision at the nexus of two > conflicting ideas. > Depending on what you mean by "conflicting ideas", I've spent a lifetime of doing it. I sometimes made subsequent decisions to reverse the effect of some harmful decision I'd made, but at the time when it was go or no-go, I chose, and I could never deny I'd done so.
