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

David McFadzean (david@lucifer.com)
Wed, 16 Jul 1997 12:50:32 -0600


At 09:43 AM 16/07/97 -0700, Tim Rhodes wrote:

>One small point: Reason and reasonable are to different things. If a
>decision is reasonable it only means that it /is able to be/ derived by
>reason, not that it necessarily was. Reasonable decisions do not, of
>themselves, imply the presence of reason.

Agreed. It is reasonable for a plant to grow toward light. But I think
animals are doing something more like reasoning when they choose to back
down in a fight over territory rather than risk getting killed, and
similar decisions. I'm not suggesting that they reason like humans
("if I don't run away now I'm going to get hurt"), but there is some
kind of pattern recognition and rule following going on in their
nervous systems.

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