virus: Rationality

Reed Konsler (konsler@ascat.harvard.edu)
Wed, 5 Mar 1997 19:22:29 -0500


From: "David McFadzean" <morpheus@lucifer.com>
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 1997 21:33:03 -0700
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> From: Richard Brodie <RBrodie@brodietech.com>
> Date: Sunday, March 02, 1997 9:32 PM

> Reread the section in "Darwin's Dangerous Idea." "Good Tricks" is indeed
> independent of humans, and refers to naturalistic "engineering"
> achievements that keep recurring simply because they give good bang for

OK, I stand corrected.

> the buck in evolutionary design-space. "Laws of the universe" implies
> that there are mystical forces outside of, but directing, objective
> reality. And I know no one here would want that!

I don't think "laws of the universe" implies mystical forces any more
that it implies the existence of a universal law-maker.
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Who is the law-maker, though? People. People make rules, laws,
equations, models, paradigms, institutions, etc. Objective reality is.
Particles do not obey "the laws of physics"...quite the contrary...
particles do as is their nature and we make up the laws they would
obey, from our perspective, if they had the capacity to care.

To speak of "laws of the universe" seems to imply that our reductive
conception of the universe is reflected in it's "true" structure. This
seems, to me, hopelessly Positivist. Just because due to our limited
capacity we must retreat to generalization and categorization in order
to explain phenomena does not mean the phenomna themselves are not
infinitely diverse.

Reed