barrington interview

Thomas Bitterman · 10 Oct 2014, 20:18 · from 2014-October.txt.gz

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From: tom at bitterman.net (Thomas Bitterman)
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 16:18:47 -0400
Subject: (urth) barrington interview
In-Reply-To: <BLU175-W26F3EEA1B4662953A189ACFA10 at phx.gbl>
References: <BLU175-W26F3EEA1B4662953A189ACFA10 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <CA+Z2yj0p-HB4qiaWeELYr90jO0LpqGy3rCZNq_+=1R2xYDVp7g at mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 9:51 AM, Lee <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>  "Is suggesting a car can't spontaneously become a nuclear fusion device
> an example
>  of "Genetic Fallacy"?"
>
>
> >Thomas Bitterman: No, but claiming that a brain cannot work purely in the
> realm of
> >symbolic logic and reason because it is the product of millions of years
> of evolution on
> >Earth is.
>
>
> I truly don't understand the difference. A gasoline power car cannot turn
> itself into a
> nuclear powered device but a human brain can turn itself into a cosmically
> universal
> logic machine unrestricted by its origins in an animal skull on planet
> earth?
>

I am unsure what my car can do.  Perhaps it is a Transformer.  But at least
the argument about cars appears to have some basis in how cars are actually
constituted currently, not where they came from.

The argument about brains seems to rest solely on their historical
development.  This is the Genetic Fallacy.  If you could provide some
justification for your conclusions based on the current properties of the
brain, and not how it got to be that way, that would be different.

As an example of a counter-argument to demonstrate the fallacy: perhaps the
human brain would not have been the cosmically universal logic machine it
is today, unrestricted by its origins in an animal skull on planet Earth,
had the Hieros not intervened as part of their plan to get some payback.
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