Reference the reply dated Wednesday, May 26, 1999 10:53 AM from John G.
I think you may have read between the lines to much. For me anyway, these
things are not a matter of "belief." I also have not clue, so I must have
missed an earlier note, where the discussion about animals, human
superiority and the like comes from. I don't see the relevance. Besides, I
think the authors of the argument about human "superiority" can be found
in most versions of the Bible. Long as you brought it up though, there is
some confusion about intellectual integrity and natural integrity when
comparing the "lower" species to humans. There is a quote that goes like:
In the lexicon of paraphrazes, there is no more incorrect than to call a
person a bird brain, for it is the bird's brain that enable it to fly from
Canada, to the Gulf and back each year, returning to the same area each
time. In this case birds have natural integrity. Humans have intelectual
integrity and are able to gateher varying amounts and type of information
to vary their route of travel, learning as they go and judging each
route's value, etc. Intellectual integrity. I don't see a bird creating
a new route based on various information sources. However, I put my money
on the bird doing it right the first time.
In my comments, which you are not referencing, I suggested that our
current view of things may be tainted by a faith that is not yet founded.
Why? For all the years humans have been communicating with each other we
still have not been able to fully come to a level of information transfer
that guarantees learning better than (and in some caseas as good as)actual
experience. Perhaps the role of virtual reality may serve here, but even
then there is a level of experience. The original note I saw raised the
question of a "system" being used to transfer knowledge, not just
information. There was no attempt to define a system in any terms other
than can be understood by a casual reader: input, through put, output and
maybe, feedback.
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