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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Greg Stevens Re: THE BRAIN AND THE BIRTHRIGHT OF A CHILD
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Date: Thu, 29 Dec 94 01:44:58 GMT
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In <3dso1c$o5f@prime.mdata.fi> jsand@mits.mdata.fi (Jan Sand) writes:

>Mr. Stevens,
>I have been following your rebuttals to Mr. Roose's articles and find 
>myself much in sympathy with your point of view, but I wonder if
>your response is appropriate....
>...It is extremely possible that Mr. Roose is quite sincere and I certainly 
>am not accusing him of anything nor trying to impugn his motives, but his
>patronizing contempt is obviously offensive and adds an odd ambience to
>his professed humanitarian motivation. Do I smell a con?

I wouldn't be as suspicious.  I was, indeed, shocked at his personally
insulting comments about my post -- however, upon reflection, I decided 
that I had indeed reacted, myself, with more contempt than was necessary.
I can understand his reaction, especially considering that he is someone
who, it seems, is quite more used than he needs to be of off-hand criticism.

Whether there is a "con" going on would only remain to be seen once, now that
I have apologized for my reaction, he responds to each of my points.  If he
addresses his assertion that there is a consensus about definition of 
intelligence and how it is produced by the brain when I believe there is
none, and if he addresses how his jump from developmental neurology to
teleology and "birthrights" is logically justified, and if he justifies
his claim that connectionism is accepted as the method of modelling most
likely to lead o understanding of intelligence when I seem to have seen
a great deal of skepticism about such claims, and if he addresses how he
arrived at his "fundamental" list of human goals and motives, then I will
assume his claims to all be well thought out and in good motive.

Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

