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Article 3917 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Determinism precludes truth?
Message-ID: <1992Feb21.174340.39593@spss.com>
Date: 21 Feb 92 17:43:40 GMT
References: <1992Feb17.224820.7895@spss.com> <1992Feb20.231024.5959@norton.com>
Organization: SPSS Inc.
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In article <1992Feb20.231024.5959@norton.com> brian@norton.com (Brian Yoder) 
writes (quoting me):
>> 1. Human beliefs are so various, not to say rococo, that it would seem hard
>> to maintain that the most useful beliefs also tend to be true.
>
>If the truth is so useless, why bother studying philosophy?  Or science?  Or 
>anything else?  Go study you Bible or your Koran and you'll do no worse under 
>your conclusions.  Would you not say that yours is an anti-intellectual
>attitude?

You are misunderstanding the discussion.  My article was questioning the
suggestion that a human facility for producing useful beliefs would 
approximate or be equivalent to a facility for producing true beliefs.
My point was simply that 'true' and 'useful' are two different 
(and overlapping) concepts.

I am quite fond of truth, but find it absurd to think that all true beliefs
are useful or that all false beliefs are not.


