Re: virus: Reason and Intuition (was: Belief and Knowledge)

David McFadzean (david@lucifer.com)
Tue, 15 Jul 1997 17:36:03 -0600


At 03:22 PM 14/07/97 -0700, Tim Rhodes wrote:

>As I understand it (the dreaded weak link in all this), "reasoning" is
>something that is done by a conscious mind.

To me that is akin to saying that you need an airplane to fly[1]. Sure,
we humans can fly farther and faster than anything else with technology
like ram jets, but animals have been flying for millions of years before
humans arrived on the scene. Likewise, animals have been making logical
decisions based on uncertain information for millions of years before
anyone "invented" boolean logic.

>"Intuition" may be a better term for this process. Or perhaps someone can
>offer an even better term.

Intuition certainly counts as the subconscious variant of the process
we are trying to name here.

At 07:40 PM 14/07/97 -0500, Brett Lane Robertson wrote:
>Habit?

No, I don't think that encompasses the kind of information processing
that is necessarily involved.

[1] I concede I may be alone in this regard :-)

--
David McFadzean                 david@lucifer.com
Memetic Engineer                http://www.lucifer.com/~david/
Church of Virus                 http://www.lucifer.com/virus/