Hi Struan and everyone I fear my last email to you may have been somewhat obtuse though I really didn't see it until after I had sent it off. Basically my point of view boils down to this... some things we learn because we have the ability to learn, some abilities we are born with and have no possibility of learning if not already in possession of the physical faculties to learn them. I'll never learn to throw a 95 mph fastball, for example. There was a kid called Todd Marinovitch (sp?) who's father groomed from the time he was born to be a NFL quarterback. He never caught on. Why? Because even the best coaching and teaching in the world cannot instill the intangibles... the so-called God-given ability that greatness takes to achieve... hard-wiring. Certain abilities are "hard-wired" into us... I think Horse and others alluded to that some time back. I think it is very relevant to ask ourselves if it is perhaps through this "hard-wiring" that the 'good' is first conceived, then communicated unambiguously to those who lack the ability to perceive of such 'good'. I take it that you are asking basically the same thing with your naturalistic vs. non-naturalistic questioning. Struan writes: (Sat, 24 Apr 1999 16:44:11) Naturalism is the belief that good is reducible to at least one naturalistic property. Glove: If we reduce the notion of 'good' to the ability to perceive the good, as in my analogy of "perfect pitch", we can then state that even though not all of us have perfect pitch, those who do are able to communicate the 'goodness' of perfect pitch with the rest of us via unambiguous agreement on a social level, allowing relativistic pitch to arise. Taking this a step further, those who's inborn abilities run into other diverse fields besides music can also 'discover the good' and communicate that 'good' with those of us who do not possess the ability to discover said 'good' because of our lack of inborn ability. Thus intellectually we who lack the innate inborn ability to perceive it can conceive of the 'good' in a relativistic fashion rather than directly. This is how our faith in the good arises perhaps... 'Fraid it's am still rather obtuse... but I will send it along anyway... glove MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
