"'Trouble is...the whole bunch of them are reasonable. But they don't reason on the same basis as us.'"
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT CHAPTER NINE, p. 84.
Bayard Story says that Babur is:
"'...the home of a species as reasonable by their lights as we are by ours.'"
-Mirkheim, III, p. 72.
Van Rijn replies:
"'God help reason, if we and they is the best it can do.'"
-ibid.
If a race believes that it is superior, then it is reasonable for it to subordinate all others. Bigots have reasoned from Biblical premises, e.g., that the Rapture would occur in 1988. CS Lewis, converting to Theism, believed that God was Reason but wondered whether He was also "reasonable," i.e., not too demanding.
Van Rijn claims to have collected data:
"'...till I got a full jigsaw puddle.'"
-Mirkheim, III, p. 73.
Jigsaw pieces fit together because they are rigid whereas a puddle is fluid so "...jigsaw puddle..." has to be an ultimate contradiction.
6 comments:
Reason is a tool.
Eg., you can reason -from- a moral postulate, but not -to- it.
Our goals are not derived from reason, but from instinct and conditioning.
Then we use reason to figure out how to -achieve- our goals.
And, very often, we use reason to rationalize what we want to believe anyway.
Jigsaws use the human ability to extrapolate from a hint to a pattern.
This was very adaptive. For example, seeing that that little glimpse could be extrapolated into a tiger waiting by the waterhole...
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I think it's simpler to think Old Nick's "jigsaw puddle" was a mangling of "jigsaw PUZZLE."
Mr. Stirling: Meaning wary early hominins/humans would search for hints of predators lurking in ambush?
Ad astra! Sean
A puzzle in a muddle.
The downside is that we tend to see patterns even if they’re not there.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Which is another way of saying we have to guard against succumbing to false preconeptions.
Merry Christmas! Sean
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