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From: dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson)
Subject: Fish is human tomato pornography theory as humor
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In article <4p9vq2$nkd@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
tobis@scram.ssec.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:

> David Swanson (dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu) wrote:
> : In article <4p73so$m8p@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
> : tobis@scram.ssec.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
> 
> : > Well, now we have reduced our differences to purely semantic ones.
> : > Why don't we agree that "things happen", that knowledge about which things 
> : > happen is possible, and that "science" is the name of the process whereby 
> : > we determine which things happen?
> 
> : OK
> 
> : > 
> : > We use "truth" as a shorthand way of saying that the same things happen
> : > whether we understand them or not. 
> 
> : Turkeyshit.
> 
> ummm, why so?


Because we don't do that, except perhaps in the single sentence "What's
true is true whether we know it or not," (which is of course
meaningless).  In sentences like "It's true that S. J. Gould is afraid
of Darwinism," we are just stating a belief. 





> 
> : For instance, when you thought you
> : > planted a broccoli and it came up cabbage, your honest belief in brocolli
> : > was "wrong", 
> 
> : According to who?
> 
> According to the bloody cabbage, that's who! Cheese...


I was just getting used to felines having beliefs.  Slow down please.


> 
> : and that had you a better understanding of the botany of
> : > such species you would have been more likely to be "right", 
> 
> : yep.
> 
> : i.e., had
> : > a closer approximation to the belief-independent "truth"?  
> 
> : the what?
> 
> : And finally,
> : > that your expectation of broccoli had no noticeable effect on the cabbage?
> 
> : nope.
> 
> How is one to argue with someone who manages to believe six impossible 
> things before breakfast? If you had tried even harder to believe in broccoli,
> would you have gotten a broccoli? I really have no idea what you're trying
> to say!
> 
> mt

There is no such thing as "trying to believe."


David

"Resistance to the proposition that the essence of truth is freedom is
based on preconceptions, the most obstinate of which is that freedom is
a property of man."  Martin Heidegger, "On the Essence of Truth," [Vom
Wesen der Wahrheit] translated by John Sallis, in "Basic Writings,"
(old version, 1977) p.126.
