Re: Reality vs. Perception of Reality

[Daddycaylor]

Tom wrote:   >> May I offer the following quote as a potential catalyst for Bruno and >> Colin: >> >> If thought is laryngeal motion, how should any one think more truly >> than the wind blows? All movements of bodies are equally necessary, but >> they cannot be discriminated as true and false. It seems as nonsensical >> to call a movement true as a flavour purple or a sound avaricious. But >> what is obvious when thought is said to be a certain bodily movement >> seems equally to follow from its being the effect of one. Thought >> called knowledge and thought called error are both necessary results of >> states of brain. These states are necessary results of other bodily >> states. All the bodily states are equally real, and so are the >> different thoughts; but by what right can I hold that my thought is >> knowledge of what is real in bodies? For to hold so is but another >> thought, an effect of real bodily movements like the rest. . . These >> arguments, however, of mine, if the principles of scientific >> [naturalism]... are to stand unchallenged, are themselves no more than >> happenings in a mind, results of bodily movements; that you or I think >> them sound, or think them unsound, is but another such happening; that >> we think them no more than another such happening is itself but yet >> another such. And it may be said of any ground on which we may attempt >> to stand as true, Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum ["It flows >> and will flow swirling on forever" (Horace, Epistles, I, 2, 43)]. (H. >> W. B. Joseph, Some Problems in Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1931), >> pp. 14-15) >> >> Regards, >> Tom Caylor > >So what?  Of course without any context, simply looking at physical >processes doesn't allow one distiguish "true opinion" for "false opinion". >True and false are the linguistic analogues of effective and ineffective >action.  Wiiliam S. Cooper as written a nice little book on this called >"The Evolution of Reason - Logic as a Branch of Biology". > >Brent Meeker I don't think Colin and Bruno were talking merely about opinion and effectiveness, but I'll let them speak for themselves.   Tom