At Sun, 21 Feb 1999 13:32:09 -0800, you wrote:
>
>David McFadzean wrote:
>
>> Another example is normative statements such as "corporations should
>> pay more tax". One can agree or disagree with them, but they are not
>> true or false (or meaningless).
>
>David, I think that when most people make normative statements they
>intend to assert the truth of those propositions. I'm not claiming to be
>able to get inside anybody else's head, but it's my impression that most
>people do believe that there are at least a few "moral facts," e.g.
>people should be nice to each other, murder is wrong, welfare queens
>should get real jobs. It's my impression that the Robert Anton Wilson's
>and the Terrence McKenna's of the world are in the minority on this
>matter. I think most people BELIEVE their normative declarations.
>
>-KMO
>
>
>TOTD for 02/05/99:
People who make normative declarations such as "corporations should pay more taxes" are asserting something about the existent state of affairs; that it compares unfavorably with their ideal (utopian) hypothetical SOA in the described respect.
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>
>This is, I think, much of the problem of the modern delemma: direct
>experience had been discounted, and in its place all kinds of belief
>systems have been erected. I would prefer a kind of intellectual anarchy
>where whatever was pragmatically applicable was brought to bear on any
>situation; where belief was understood as a self-limiting function.
>Because, you see, if you believe something, you are automatically
>precluded from believing its opposite; which means that a degree of your
>human freedom has been forfeited in the act of committing yourself to
>this belief.
>
> -Terrence McKenna
>
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>I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of
>brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the
>atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.).
>
> -Robert Anton Wilson
>
>
>
>
Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher