From: crawford@boole.mitre.org (Randy Crawford)
Subject: Re: Atheism and Intelligence
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 06:10:14 GMT

In article <BzIx3J.FxA@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> ivaliote@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Lotus ) writes:
>>>>Feelings stem from something.  They don't come out
>>>>of thin air, so to speak.  You may say you don't know why you feel
>>>>a certain way, but there is a reason.
>>>
>>>You can't prove that to me.  Again, reason is insufficient.
>>
>>Reason is insufficient because you don't understand the reason?  Can't
>>help you there.
>
>No.  Reason is insufficient because it can't grasp all ideas completely.  If 
>you can give me a completely rational proof for why I love my girlfriend, 
>then please do so.  Understanding denotess reason.  Again, there is a *cause*
>for my love of her.  It need not be rational, and ratrionality cannot define 
>and explain it sufficiently.

I see a confusion of terms here.  `Reason' is being used to mean both 
`deductive' and `inductive' logic.  I'll agree that the love of your girlfriend
is unprovable with deductive logic.  In fact, deductive logic has nothing to
add whatsoever to the causal analysis of this sort of real-world phenomenon.
As an analytical process, it lacks the reagents needed to make it work.  The 
premises are unverifiable and so must be the conclusions.

However inductive logic may be of some value.  While it too cannot prove
beyond a shadow of a doubt the love you have for your girlfriend, I would bet
that it can provide a practical level of undeniability for it.  Based on a
host of observations, in establishing sufficient premises and in applying
the natural processes that must inevitably tie them to natural consequences, 
induction can weave a causal thread through every observable manifestation in
the natural world.  To deny this is to refute the natural order of the 
universe and all of science.  Are you ready to do that?

>
>>>I eat to be fed, to keep my body alive.  Why do I love?  Love's goal can't 
>>>be love....not Logically, anyway.

It's easy enough to see many forms of love as being positive reinforcement 
for staying with your mate, having a family, and taking care of the children 
you produce.  The selfish gene, and all that.  Read E.O. Wilson.

>
>>Love is a pleasant thing, for the most part.  

No.  Love is a many-splendored thing.

>
>>Part of experiencing a
>>pleasant thing is often wanting it to persist.  Love is a drive, and that
>>drive serves a purpose in both psychological and physical reactions,
>>all of which themselves serve a purpose in continuance and security and
>>productivity of the species.  I don't know what could be clearer than
>>that concept.  And the adherence to logic in the pursuit and continuance
>>of love is a necessary means of reducing any negative outcomes of it.

I disagree that love is a drive.  Sex is a drive.  Hunger is a drive.  Greed 
is a drive.  Love is founded in more than just physiology or culture.  Love 
can be illogical and self-destructive.  It compels you to do all sorts of 
senseless things, like risk your life or wealth for the sake of someone else. 
Much of this can be explained in simple terms of evolutionary forces which 
lead you to protect the gene pool closest to you, but when you sacrifice for 
someone outside that pool, as love is wont to do, that argument fails.  Many 
forms of love aren't so simple.

I still believe that love is logically (inductively) explainable, but not 
as a simple drive.  Maybe as a complex drive?  Or perhaps as a constructive
outlet for a our collection of often conflicting emotional needs.  I dunno
and I don't really care.  I don't think I really want to understand love.
The universe needs at least one unresolved mystery.

>
>Well....whatever you say.  Love *means* something to me, but I suppose you
>deny the existence of meaning which is not entirly rational, but that is 
>because it exists outside of reason's room, a room which I caould argue you 
>are locked in.  I hate sounding liek a religion dork, because I am not one.  
>But telling me my love is 'reasonable' and 'rational' feels like telling me it
>is meaningless and cold.  That feeling is significant.  MAybe it isn't 
>rational.  Oh, well.

I don't think that just because you can understand largely why your girl-
friend loves you that that in any way diminishes her love or makes it
colder.  You understand much of what makes a starry night sky, but has it 
made you any less starstruck?  Not me.  That our science and technology 
has put Man on the moon doesn't lessen one whit the activity of my imagin-
ation as I look upon it and wonder where we've been and where one day we'll 
be.

That reason changes the way we see the world is indisputable.  But that it
injures our appreciation for the experience of being alive?  Hogwash.  In
one of his books, Richard Feynman (the famous physicist, for the uninitiated)
recounted a similar tale of when an artist told him that he pitied Feynman
because he could not equally appreciate the beauty of a rose, since as a
scientist he could not see a rose's simple beauty because he could not divorce
himself from an understanding of how it worked and of what it was composed.
Feynman laughed, and he said that nothing could be less true, for he had an 
opportunity not only to appreciate the same aesthetics that the artist did,
but he could see a rich diversity of other associations when he looked upon
a rose that the artist could not.

I liken this to being able to smell the rose as well as look on it.  Or to
see that it has thorns and know what purpose they serve and their analogues
in life.  Or to observe the pistils and remember that some bees are attracted 
to the UV light reflected by the petals of some flowers, and that to them a 
rose may appear entirely different than to us.  I see all of this as an
enrichment of my appreciation of a rose.  And I believe that an appreciation
for reason is no different.

>>[...]
>>It would be difficult to point out any competent artist that
>>has no knowledge or skill of their craft that is based on some system
>>that succeeds for them.

>Sheesh.  And they never cry about it, never feel anything transcendent, and
>are basically cold.  Emotion is just part of the computer program of our DNA.

I don't follow this.  Every artist is a craftsman; every craftsman is a 
tradesman.  Simply because someone masters a skill doesn't mean s/he loses
passion for living.

Your second statement makes more sense.  Both emotion and reason are very 
much part of our makeup.  To deny either is fruitless and would leave us
incomplete.  Reason is what keeps us alive and passion is what makes that
life worth living.  The two are essential.  I believe that in all of this 
discussion, I've not heard anyone claim that passion does not belong as 
part of living, only that it needs to be minimized as part of reasoning.

I think that Freud had a pretty fair model of this dymnamic.  He based his 
model of the mind on the constant interplay between these two (ego for reason 
and id for passion) throwing in a sense of ethics and compassion (the super-
ego) to round things out.  In his mind, the id was the powerhouse behind the
personality, initiating thoughts and motivations.  It was the role of the
ego and superego to step in and negotiate with one another before the mind
was to act on the id's desires.  That's what I see as the role of reason
(or logic).  It completes us as sentient beings.

>
>Clinging pathetically to meaning,

Me too.
-- 

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