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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!!

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To: Neocon who wrote (78661)4/22/2000 9:25:00 PM
From: Dayuhan  Read Replies (2) of 108807
 
Well, that is not the nature of induction, which is generalization from experience.

I fail to see how anybody can present an opinion based on generalization from experience when the subject of the discussion is the origins of morality. On the origins of our personal moral criteria, yes, but that is a different topic altogether. I did not experience the origin of "morality" in the abstract, and unless you're a whole lot older than I think, you didn't either.

If I were going to show why I claim that an elephant has a tusk, I would show you miscellaneous pictures of elephants........


No, you wouldn't. You would quote me lengthy speculations on the nature of elephants, written by ancients who lacked the advantage of having seen an elephant.

I have nothing against the thinkers of past years; we have much to learn from them, particularly where the process of thought is concerned. Where the specific content of thought is concerned, though, excessive reliance on classical thought is, I believe, an error. The ancient philosophers were no different than us; they could only base their meditations on their personal experience and the accumulated observations of their race, and they were to some degree limited by the assumptions and prejudices of their age.

Personal experience I would say is an equal factor; I have no reason to believe that the personal experience of an ancient philosopher is any more or less indicative of fundamental truth than mine. In terms of accumulated observation, though, we have an enormous advantage, being the beneficiaries of science, which has provided us with a range and accuracy of observations of which the ancients could not have dreamed. We have the additional advantage of not thinking in an age where any public expression of thought, including writing, is likely to be subjected to censorship by the forces of organized religion.

We cannot imagine how the reasoning of the great thinkers of the past would have changed if they had had access to the base of information that we possess.

In any case, trying to resolve a debate by quoting extensively from the ancients, followed by a grand announcement of inductive reasoning too complex to recount, smacks of evasion. If you want to sit at the table, sooner or later you have to show your cards, and what's written on those cards is "this is what I think and this is why I think it".
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