I was fascinated in what you had to say about:

*All we know is accidents – even natural laws, even mathematics in all of its branches – in reality we know these things historically, that is, in an accidental linear occurrence of learning, that is, how each of us as pure individuals learn the things we know. *

I agree. Although we are aware of objects and are able to identify them and describe them etc., what is said about them - what WE say about them [and I include human objects] is filtered through the metaphysical mesh of what we have been told about them, in a language we have inherited, much of which [though a lot has been updated] is couched in accord with ontological paradigms which should have been thrown on the scrap heap years ago along with Plato's forms, the Ptolemaic system and the dreaded phlogiston theory.

GARY C. MOORE:
I am reading THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN by Michael Crichton again, the nearest I will ever come to voluntarily reading a text about medicine. The hero, Stone, develops the Wildfire project that deals with pathogens of unknown origin precisely by dealing only with direct physical observation of one person studying one object and describing precisely what they find, under what specific physical conditions, and limiting their conclusions to only what they physically, personally, and immediately observe. He essentially takes seriously every proposition proposed to him by others, and, despite the automatic rejection of the majority - such as purported alien bacteria always being contamination coming from the examining scientist - asks if these conclusions are simply but strictly logically possible.

    They do not have to be plausible or generally accepted, just remotely possible, allowable according to strict logic, though implausible according to chances of occurrence, and especially and most of all one’s personal physical observation than can then possibly have repeatable results when the same process is observed by others regardless of how difficult such an experiment or observation may be, that is, how inconvenient to the general observer automatically supporting the automatic response to what seems like an outrageous proposal.


           The point is, the point of view of physical personal observation is the absolutely sole means of obtaining evidence for absolutely anything. This includes geometry and all the *perfect* mathematical sciences. Why are they considered perfect? Because their results always agree. Why do their results always agree? Because the same definitions and rules of operation are accepted. The field of what is strictly valid is highly limited - in the abstract, that is, geometry is perfect only on paper or the brain. In physical application, however, this is not at all the case, going from one extreme of simple blunders to the middle level of unknown discoveries of inconvenient stress on materials that has not happened before to the microscopic but related material aspect of the grossly approximate application of *perfect* geometry to objects whose microscopic defects invalidate the results of that *perfect* geometry which, in physical fact, can never be *perfectly* applied to real matter.

     This necessarily, without exception, means every observation one makes is absolutely unique in itself no matter what it is of, or rather of what matter it is made of. That one comes to conclusions that others can agree with because they repeat a similar personal observation process simply validates the scientific method of repeatability – which never rejects the personal and immediately individual observation of any piece of knowledge whether it is spiral DNA or geometry and the laws of physics - as long as individuals can individually repeat the experiment with the same results. Therefore *perfect* knowledge has no place in scientific method because scientific method is wholly dependent upon accumulation of repeated results, not any Idea of Perfection of geometry in the brain not physically applied to matter. Materially applied geometry then can never be perfect, can never have perfectly exact results in physical reality.

     In history, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that what everyone seems to have as common knowledge is in fact individual facts simply held as similar – and often described as absolutely the same without physical proof – such as Ptolemys, Issac Newtons, and Albert Einsteins views of the universe which, if they truly held basic physical laws in any real and *perfect* sense *common*, could never have made their revolutionary discoveries. Obviously, the *same* thing they looked at that seemed exactly the same to the majority was not seen the same way by them, given their personal, subjective observational point of view. The facts each theoretician used were symbolically the same but obviously viewed from a completely different personal aspect that gave them a completely different idea of how to interpret those facts which, in fact, means those *commonly held facts* could not possibly have been any way near perfectly the same in any commonly held field of knowledge.

JUD EVANS:
I am sure that Hume would be well pleased with the above, which is a very well put together fugue on a theme by Hume seamlessly spliced with a joyously Moorean extrapolation of his own views on the matter. Hume put forward similar views in his brilliant [if not complete] rejection of *causality* in which he used the clash of the billiard balls as an example. I have now more or less accepted that Hume was the most brilliant philosopher who ever lived [and I include Aristotle in that evaluation]

RICHARD SANSOM:
Gary, When you say: *all we know, all, is accidents even natural laws, even mathematics in all of its branches* begs the epistemological question as to what
*knowledge* IS.

GARY C. MOORE:
Knowledge is in every situation personal physical observation according to rules one has personally validated, that is, it is the primary given of sense experience. Knowledge either is accepted as what you sense or it is not accepted as such. A rejection can actually be logically valid as the Idealists do since they say sense perception purely of itself is chaos and unknowable unless we apply pre-existent Ideas to make *sense*, that is, *knowledge of it. But in practice, we apply ideas, that is, words, concepts to sense experience as an experiment to see if the words fit, not the other way around as pure Idealists do.

JUD EVANS:
I agree with the above, but with my own personal slant that it is *the sensing knowledgeable knower* who exists and not the abstraction known as *knowledge.* For me it works somewhat like this.

(1) Richard exists in an *Existential State A* modality of not knowing [being unaware] that they are planning to construct an artificial lake two miles further up Frei Road from where he lives. In the supermarket he meets a local farmer friend who causes him to change to *Existential State B* of being aware of the intentions of the authorities to construct an artificial lake two miles further up Frei Road from where he lives.

(2) Gary and Jud exist elsewhere in an *Existential State A* modality of not knowing [being unaware] that they are planning to construct an artificial lake two miles further up Frei Road from where Richard lives.

(3) Richard then begins to exist in an *Existential State C* modality of wishing to tell Gary and Jud that they are planning to construct an artificial lake two miles further up Frei Road from where he lives. Whilst in that mode [frame of mind] using an agreed system of signs that he knows will be understood by his two friends, he types out a coded representation of his neurological *Existential State B* of knowing they are planning to construct an artificial lake two miles further up Frei Road from where he lives, which includes him mentioning ( *I thought you might be interested to know* ) his *Existential State C* modality and sends it by e-mail.

(4) Existing in a state of being unaware of the planned development in Frei Road Gary and Jud switch on their computers and read the code, which informs them of Richard's former existential modality and his active neurological state at the time of writing. The two friends then change the way that they exist from*Existential State A* [being unaware] to *Existential State B* [being aware.] ) Gary and Jud now exist in the new state of being aware that they are planning to construct an artificial lake two miles further up Frei Road from where he lives.

So what transpired was the knowing Richard informing his friends of his recently changed way of existing from that of being in (State A) [being unaware] traceable back to the time when a local farmer friend caused him to change to *Existential State B* of being aware of the intentions of the authorities, to the most recent state *Existential State C* of thinking his two friends might be interested in changing the way that they existed [in relation to the matter] from their own version of *Existential State A* to *Existential State B.*

I suggest to you that just like any other learning event in our lives, what occurred was not an exchange of *information, * but a notification of a change of his existential
*knowing* states by Richard to his friends, which led to a change in their own personal states, which then became personal versions of Richard's existential states as communicated to them by him using the means of a previously agreed code [the English language.]

No *information* therefore *exists out there* as an additional * ontologically different* immaterial being separated from those humans who know (or who do not know) of the intention of the authorities to construct an artificial lake two miles further up Frei Road from where Richard lives.

All of the individual humans involved in these plans have entirely different existential versions of existing in relation to the Frei Road project and ALL of them exclude Richard - because none of them know of him personally

RICHARD SANSOM:
[I suppose it is also an ontological question in the fullest sense.] If knowledge is but the arrangements of synapses and neuronal connections and no two of us have identical arrangements of these physical and chemical elements, then all knowledge is only subjective, and no two persons
*knowledge* can be identical.

JUD EVANS:
Precisely - we all exist differently and we all bring and introduce different experiences, slants and knowledge to the way we deal with existing in the new mode of being aware that they plan to construct an artificial lake two miles further up Frei Road from where you live.

GARY C. MOORE:
This is true. Knowledge is purely subjective as it is purely personal, individual. Any other conclusion would have to be either Idealistic or supernaturalist involving mind reading of some sort. It is confirmed in other peoples subjective - from one specific person to another - fields of knowledge by personal testing to see if the same results are obtained. And such experiments are cumulative, not perfect and enduring forever in and of itself.

JUD EVANS:
Because I was involved in project planning of such schemes for 10 years I am aware that though they may be planning to construct an artificial lake two miles further up Frei Road from where Richard lives it will only be confirmed when the heavy machinery moves in and the job is well underway. Even then an earthquake or some other calamity may to put paid to their plans.

*The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley.* Robert Burns: 'To a Mouse.*

But Hey! I cannot resist publishing the whole beautiful poem:

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie, O, what panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, Wi' murd'ring pattle! I'm truly sorry Man's dominion Has broken Nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion, Which makes thee startle, At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve; What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! A daimen-icker in a thrave ' S a sma' request: I'll get a blessin wi' the lave, An' never miss't! Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin! It's silly wa's the win's are strewin! An' naething, now, to big a new ane, O' foggage green! An' bleak December's winds ensuin, Baith snell an' keen! But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' wast, An' weary Winter comin fast, An' cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell, Till crash! the cruel coulter past Out thro' thy cell. That wee-bit heap o' leaves an' stibble, Has cost thee monie a weary nibble! Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble, But house or hald. To thole the Winter's sleety dribble, An' cranreuch cauld! Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But Och! I backward cast my e'e, On prospects drear! An' forward, tho' I canna see, I guess an' fear!

RICHARD SANSOM
[this is even ignoring the quantum level of disagreements among our physical brains] What then of mathematical knowledge or belief, wherein it is a fact that two people can use the axioms of mathematics to solve the same problem and get identical answers?

GARY C. MOORE:
If this is done only abstractly, it is merely a game like tic-tac-do. You simply set up the rules and play by the rules. But to have a real problem is a problem of material application wherein *identical answers* is a physical impossibility. Knowledge starts as subjective and therefore has to remain subjective. Even the study of the material object is from different visual and historical points of view, that is, accidents. Any other stance would necessarily be Idealism, the racial unconscious, supernaturalism, something that would justify peering into anothers mind to see that they exactly perceive the *same* fact truly and exactly identically. Approximately the same does not count because obviously in the past scientists have taken *identical* facts and saw them within extremely different contexts from everyone else.

JUD EVANS:
*Tic-tac-toe* we say - but beautifully put. Playing with the abstractions we call number is just a game - a very SERIOUS and useful game but nevertheless a game by which we say things like:

Naval Architect:
*Do you see the first joint of my thumb? We will call this an *inch.* I wish to know the length of the new handrail we have been commissioned to fix around the Titanic - just start at one end of the old rail - put your thumb on the rail and count the number of thumb lengths.

Workman:
*What ALL the way around?*

Naval Architect: *No silly, Just check out the rail-length on one side and double it.*

Doubling the amount of thumb-lengths is the game of tic-tac-toe - it is extrapolating or abstracting the actual thumb-joint away from the job of measuring. I believe all of basic number abstraction was extrapolated away from fingers and toes and counting cattle or sheaves of corn etc., somewhere in the Mesopotamian area or the Indus River valleys.

RICHARD SANSOM:
If, given the rules of geometry, two people can determine that all triangles have three angles whose sum is always 180 degrees, does this mean that, inherent in those axioms, there exists irrefutable conditions that inevitably lead to the same result by any human mind that can understand those conditions? Is there such a thing as the inherent or intuitive clarity of the idea of a perfect circle? Indeed, is there inherent or intuitive clarity in the idea of a perfect anything?

JUD EVANS:
I would re-phrase that as: If, given their experience of geometrical objects two people can determine that all triangular objects have three angles whose sum is always 180 degrees, does this mean that following from that experiential knowledge, there exists irrefutable conditions that inevitably lead to the same result by any human mind that can understand such triangular shaped objects? Are there such things as triangular objects? Yes there are I have some in my house and there are countless billions which we will never see. It is not that *triangularity exists* but that triangular objects exist. because being triangular is a shape that *nature* [the existential imperative] finds to be amongst the most appropriate in certain circumstances. We all know what abstractions are; but it is challenging for some to determine their essential quality. Let us begin by distinguishing between concrete facts on the one hand, and abstractions on the other. Such definitions come easily to the eliminativist, for the adjectival qualifier 'concrete' is a redundancy. All facts are concrete. The words: 'fact, thing, being, object, entity and the descriptor 'real' are synonyms. The adjective 'real' is exclusively descriptional of objects alone. The adverb 'really' is applied solely in accordance with the perceived truth, fact or reality of a material entity. *Truth' can be defined as a correct description of the existential modality of an object in relation to another object or objects. Such definitions of 'truth' are always cast as 'qualified' or 'best fit' descriptions of objects, in view of the detectional limitations of the human sensorium. The terms 'reality,' being, existence, actuality, are rejected as probably the most extreme manifestations of reification

An abstraction, reification, hypostatisation, personification and deification are conceptualisations which do not exist in or by themselves, but are labels representing generalities or salient features of the observed objects of the environment as described by categorizing human beings.

'Rectangularity' is not an object, fact or an entity having an independent existence. It cannot be found in the world existing as a thing to which you can gesture, touch, taste, smell or hear and say, 'Look! This is 'rectangularity.' There are of course uncountable millions of 'rectangular' entities in the world of different types, colours, temperatures, weights, sizes, tastes and smells. The abstraction ''rectangularity' is a useful fiction which enables us to avoid time-wasting paraphrasis and circumlocution. But as useful as the term is for economy of words and rapidity of communication - ''rectangularity.' ' still does not exist and no amount of wishful thinking will make it so.

It is understandable that the idealist might comment: 'OK. But ''rectangularity' is a real characteristic of all rectangles, realised wherever these shapes exist, and nowhere else.'

To which the eliminativist would no doubt respond.

The 'property' of being shaped like a rectangle does not exist - only rectangular objects themselves can be found in the world.

To instantiate the conception of 'rectangularity' remote from any particular rectangular object is to reify (or render as real) the concept of rectangularity. In a similar way to hypostasise the social behaviour recognised by society as 'honest behaviour' with the abstraction, 'honesty' is also to fall into an ontological trap, for 'honesty' is not a concrete fact, but a distinguishing quality of the behaviour of a multitude of concrete honest humans.

GARY C. MOORE:
The idea of a *perfect* anything has absolutely no ground, again, *absolutely* because that involves perfect agreement between minds in the abstract instead of the very approximate and vague agreement of mere words. The rules of geometry are never *given*. They are always learned by individuals in different situations that give different slants, points of view – quite literally, physically, and materially – from anyone else. Therefore Lobachevsky can take the *given* rules of Euclidean flat surface geometry and put then upon irregular surfaces which give completely different results from Euclid.

JUD EVANS:
*Perfection* like *beauty* is an anthropocentric concept. All objects in the cosmos are *perfect* in the sense that not one of them is exactly the same as the other, but is a
*perfect* example of the way it is. [otherwise it would BE THAT OTHER] All objects are real - even real fake Rolex watches.

RICHARD SANSOM:
There are those [such as Roger Penrose and Plato] who say yes there is such a thing, that thing is the ontic reality of the 180 degree sum of angles and the perfect circle.

JUD EVANS:
They are dreamers . There is no such thing that is an ontic reality of 180 degree sum of angles and the perfect circle. At micro-level the edges of all objects are as serrated as an old comb with *aboriginal* atoms floating off and *foreigners* landing in their place. Such ideas are characteristic of a society in which the smallest object which could be seen was somewhat smaller in size to the dot between these two brackets ( . ) It is not a perfect *point* at all at higher magnification, but more like an example of a Rorschachian ink-blot or a map of Antarctica.

RICHARD SANSOM:
Penrose would no doubt claim that without such SUBSTANTIAL truth in such things, mathematics would have no power and the results of its use [in building houses and aeroplanes, etc.] would always be questionable and quite unpredictable. Thus, I can see why one might believe in fundamental truths in nature, without the necessary consensus of others.

JUD EVANS:
The building of houses and aeroplanes, etc. can still take place because of counting ontic finger and ontic toes and abstracting away from such actual objects first to abstractions of [say] five fingers - by drawing five fingers [as in the first hieroglyphs] thence to a roughly marked five lines and from there [for speed and economy] to a single mark which represented five [5] fingers.

As this system was used to count many objects [not just fingers] such as pots, pomegranates, pigs and peanuts the association with the fingers was forgotten. It was but a short step for the numbers to be abstracted completely, so that their link with any actual object was unnecessary. If the numbers were painted equally spaced on a measuring rod accuracy could be obtained for cutting square stones for the pyramids and other structures because the architects and the stone cutters all had similarly marked rods. Thus the *truth* of such things lies in material objects - abstracting human mathematicians and ordinary abstracting folk who use number and the tapes, rules, slide rules and calculators we have made to provide accuracy. Thus building, measuring and counting things becomes highly predictable and the better the material instruments the more accurate the product. As I have said before. If you have a pebble in your hand and you believe it is a pebble and it IS a pebble and you feel it, see it, taste it, smell it, tap it and hear it - then you exist in a modality whereby you have in your hand what idealists call *truth.*

GARY C. MOORE:
Consensus has absolutely no logical validity for the reasons stated above. Consensus in physical reality would mean microscopic exactness of reproduction of results. Even in scientific experiments done according to rigid standards there are *acceptable* levels of variability so there is no *perfection* to be found there.

JUD EVANS:
True. Any consensus amongst people is arrived at because the ordinary bricklayer knows the size of his material bricks and the measure of cement necessary between them. Using the abstracted numbers which originated back in the market places of the ancient orient he can measure the length of the wall and calculate the number of bricks required and tell you in advance how much it will cost.

RICHARD SANSOM:
All this of course is pure Platonism, but aspects of it are not only quite comforting in our need to have stability and order, but also hard to refute on the surface.

JUD EVANS:
People need patterns to live by. I am working on an idea right now that reification [including the reification of number) is a biological thing. It goes something like this: Reification is a key social and psychological mechanism in the steady accumulation of advantage in the process of natural selection, which has facilitated mankind's ascendency over other life forms.

Reification can also have seriously detrimental, socially retrogressive effects and negative implications for societal, political and religious stability. The main argument is then introduced, which situates reification as an important factor of punctuated equilibrium, or the stop-start inter-actional system of natural selection that results in the evolution of organisms best adapted to the environment.

I seek to persuade the reader that the crucial dynamic of all that exists is the psycho-physical tension between a disposition towards morphological, modalic or behavioural adaptation on the one hand and a compensating antithetical constitutional inflexibility or resistance to change on the other. In this sense it contains elements of Antony's dialectic. My initial intention is to ignore the domain of the inanimate and confine my analysis to the domain of biological differentiation and adaptation.

Later, I will concentrate exclusively on the human dimension. The main focus will therefore be to consider the persisting physical-intellectual tensions in modern man as an ongoing opposition between the formation of reificational absolutes or apperceptive inferences of perceptual reality which support the status quo, and the responsive, revolutionary de-reificational adjustment towards intellectual realism and reality-engagement.

Thus the present- day intellectual and linguistic struggle betwixt reificational opposites mirrors and preserves or challenges the primal, exclusively physical rigidity versus adjustment model of early biological life-forms and the flora and fauna of the modern world as exposed to pollution and human despoliation etc.

Please bear with me, for these ideas are in an early formative stage right now.

Hitherto the mechanisms of selection have been ascribed to genetical factors. Spontaneous individual change whether unconscious or deliberate involving the rejection of conventional paradigms has to a large degree been discounted. Animals and plants that survive are those that inhabit niche environments and are able to respond and adapt their behavior or physical characteristics to new factors in their surroundings - those that resist adaptation on the basis that tried and tested survivalist paradigms are eliminated.

With respect to the development of human phenotypes I consider the punctuated equilibrium theory of Eldredge and Gould as an adjuvant rather than as a methodological criticism of the traditional Darwinian theory of evolution. For Darwin evolution is seen to happen as a slow, uninterrupted process, without abrupt leaps forward or periods of quiescence.

As revealed by the punctuated equilibrium theory, a detailed critical inspection of the fossils of organisms reveals that in subsequent geological layers, you will see long intervals of equilibrium. There are periods in which the forces of change and stasis cancel one another out, followed by abrupt, epochal change, in which species become extinct and are superceded by altogether new forms. Such a developmental scenario fits perfectly with the 'stop - start' theory of human discontinuous reification, whereby older, existing social paradigms are challenged by de-reificationalists, which, if propitiously successful, become the replacement social templates that in their turn are interiorised, bolstered etc.

Human history is replete with outstanding examples of the repudiation of traditional reification and the introduction of new, innovative reifiational patterns. The reified belief in 'the stable state' for example is highlighted by Donald Schon (1973, first published 1971) who takes as his starting point the loss of the stable state. Belief in the stable state, he suggests, is belief in ‘the unchangeability, the constancy of central aspects of our lives, or belief that we can attain such a constancy’ (Schon 1973: 9). Such a belief is strong and deep, and provides a bulwark against uncertainty. Institutions are characterized by ‘dynamic conservatism’ – ‘a tendency to fight to remain the same’ (ibid.: 30). However, with technical change continuing exponentially its pervasiveness and frequency was ‘uniquely threatening to the stable state’ (ibid.: 26). He then proceeds to build the case for a concern with learning (see inset).

Discontinuous reification is more of a comment upon natural change rather than an alternative theory of evolution. However, this explanation is more persuasive in the light of some general insights from the systems approach which I plan to outline soon. [the actual grammatical mechanisms of reification which can be traced back to Sanskrit etc.]

GARY C. MOORE:
This is true again. As William of Baskerville demonstrates, one first approaches ambiguous knowledge Idealistically trying to fit it into archetypes of identity, but as more specific physical knowledge is gained – an object approaching you or you it – the Idealism is discarded to account for personal physical observation that may not fit any known archetype whatsoever. Is Salvatore, for instance, human? In some things yes, in other things *he* is far outside the limits of our normal individual experience. These things can be accepted as methodologies in specific circumstances - an object is far away and blurry - but with more specific knowledge, they must be discarded. They are hardly *perfect* in any physical sense. I doubt if there is anything perfect at all in physical nature, that what seems perfect at first is merely an inability to achieve closer observation.

RICHARD SANSOM:
Think about the Pythagorean theorem: any REAL and COMPLETE proof requires that some very tough things must be dealt with: what is a straight line? What is a 90 angle? these are not trivial questions, yet they are assumed to be handled by our intuitive powers.

JUD EVANS:
Human entities exist as respondents counterbalanced and effected by the interplay of opposing elements or tendencies of physical tension engendered by the radical stimuli of the changing environment. The necessity of abstracting ideas of straightness and angularity was essential at certain stages in the development of mankind. Planning the shortest crossing of a lake, making sure an arrow found its mark [primitive ballistics] Those that abstracted successfully crossed the lake in safely - the others drowned. Those that worked out how to shoot an arrow in a straight line ate - those that didn't [or couldn't] starved.

The abstractors flourished and a major part of that ability to reify was to construct behavioural patterns which were reified into quasi-entities. The hunt. Preparation for the hunt [rituals] Harvesting [rituals] The objectification of marital and sexual obligations in the words *wife* and *house-bond* etc. My theory is that in primitive societies, where food and shelter was plentiful and predators few, less reification took place [less thingification of verbs] and societies remained comparatively unchanged [static]

The more challenged a group was - the more reificational *action patterns* were required in order to survive. I need to research this part of it. I may find for example that primitive forest dwellers had a wealth of abstraction appertaining to the trees, plants and animals that surrounded them , but less of the higher type abstraction, which engaged in intellectual curiosity as regards to the origin of life, the nature of sickness and death etc., other than attitudes adequate for grieving the death of loved ones. On the other hand, the coastal dweller had more abstraction concerned with the ocean and that which dwelt therein?

It is only the kernel of an idea right now and the scope of it is immense. I would like to claim it as my own idea but in fact it is the work of an American genius called James. W. Woodard, *Intellectual Realism and Culture Change,* 1935, who has sunk almost without trace. I managed to obtain his out of print book at great expense with the help of an antiquarian book dealer. I am attempting to marry my own specifically eliminativist ideas to his broad sweep of reification as a biological phenomenon to be found not only in humans, but also in other animals. Woodard does not limit his concept of reification to the concretisation of universals (like *Love* etc ) but extends it to the entification of behavioural attitudes, survivalist ploys and patterns of feeding, mating, habit formation and all the rest.

GARY C. MOORE:
That would mean purely in the mind, not in physical reality at all. Hume has already broached this problem. There is no intuition involved. *Intuition* is mere acceptable approximation - as *acceptable variable parameters* in a scientific experiment - because if you examine a perfect right angle under a microscope you discover a wildly irregular line that, enlarged, you would never accept as *perfectly straight*. This applies to all physical observation and I know of.

JUD EVANS:
*intuition* for Woodard is a reification of a procedural formula - a *go* feature of the *stop - go* nature of cultural change. Of course it can work both ways - the guy who intuitively presses the GO button when dealing with a new predator and adopts a new tactic may survive to pass on his genes whilst the others are exterminated, in which case a new behavioural paradigm is reified - but he may have made the wrong move and HE becomes the one that is mauled to death. This works in with my point that survival is not EXCLUSIVELY connected to a slow process of genetical modification over centuries or thousands of years - individual action and the subsequent re-jigging of old reificational paradigms can effect spurts in these matters.

En passant Thomas Kuhn made the same point in the sixties when he also identified such antithetical paradigmatic revolutions in more modern scientific progress. Kuhn distinguished 'normal science' in which problems are solved within existing paradigms, and 'revolutionary science' where the whole 'way of seeing' is changed (e. g. by Darwinian evolution, or Einstein's theory).

Because such major changes involve revolution in viewpoint (and in this sense may be 'incommensurable' with the old theory) Kuhn said that we could never be certain that at some future time existing knowledge would not be superseded by something from a completely new viewpoint.

Others (e. g. Paul Feyerabend) took this further - some even seeing' science' as an 'ideology' ice a system of value-beliefs without any base of objectivity. Historian of science Bob Young has come close to this. Feyerabend also questioned whether there could be a 'scientific method' since in the past discovery seemed to him to have come about in a non methodical way.

RICHARD SANSOM:
A straight line is the shortest distance between two points; what is a point? In what geometric space is *distance* determined?

JUD EVANS:
For me *distance* does not exist - nor does the 300 miles between me and London. What exists is the earth's surface and its covering of vegetation, forests, towns roads, underground cables, drains and human and animal life. Spatial points are also arbitrary abstractions which only exist as a feature of the neurological activity of the human brain.

GARY C. MOORE:
Even the mathematicians say a point is pure abstraction, a pragmatic starting point reflecting no physical reality at all. I am not talking about definitions which are necessarily hypotheses that need to be applied to physical reality in order to be confirmed.

RICHARD SANSOM:
Ask anyone to define a line, straight or not, and they will have much trouble and, if they are familiar with higher mathematics they will get into infinitesimals, etc and lose most of us. Could it be that the ease with which we accept these *truths* is related to our competence in the easy acceptance and acquisition of language?

JUD EVANS:
When a behavioural paradigm is successfully reified and proves to be suitable, workable and dependable people stick to it., until the time comes that it has either outlived its usefulness or is generating results that are counter-productive.

Foreign involvement good. Vietnam and Iraq bad = new paradigm in need of reification. Isolationism? Friendly engagement?

GARY C. MOORE:
True. Language is only the wildest and widest approximation. Physical experience is the only validifying factor.

JUD EVANS:
True. Now you know why I called my web site *Evans Experientialism.

GARY C. MOORE:
Having it work out logically in the brain is nice, but it can only be tested for *Truth* in physical reality, and that physical reality is always variable. Physical experience is not interpretation. It just is what it is. Interpretation is pure hypotheses and continues to remain so even after being confirmed by a hundred experiments because it is a logical possibility on the 101th experiment different results will be obtained. This is always a necessary possibility, therefore experimental results, however much confirmed by numerous experiments, always necessarily remain approximate and therefore subjective in the strict sense.

JUD EVANS:
Hurrah for Hume!

RICHARD SANSOM:
I think the point is: is there harm in believing in the intuitive assumptions about these kinds of things? If so, what is that harm?

JUD EVANS:
For me reificational intuitivism is a double-edged sword. It can work wonders if it works for the good of survival - it can be disastrous if it is put to misuse [cue aircraft full of screaming passengers heading for tall building to cries of Allah Akhbar! ] Far better if we USE reification, but make sure we do not allow it to USE US. The way out of that is to acknowledge that it is an artificial form of exposition and we REALISE that it is dangerous [abstract nouns are communicational hand-grenades in the wrong hands] but we are in control and don't REALLY take it seriously enough to believe that it actually exists.

GARY C. MOORE:
Definitely. If nothing else, one distances oneself from the real sources of knowledge and, worse, erases their very narrow limitations. For instance, sense experience is not interpretation. There is only very little I can really *know* as opposed to mere interpretation and pragmatic acceptance. Those are simply compromises on how to get along with the world. Do you believe the world is *getting along*? Do you believe we *have a handle* on how the world really works and it is as near perfection as we can get it? Since I reject *perfection* in any mode whatsoever, it is a mute question for me. But I think *compromised* knowledge - which is the only knowledge there is - necessarily comes to a failure point sooner or later.

RICHARD SANSOM:
I have my opinions about this but I would like to hear others. Another question arises related to such things as universal truths: we can safely ascribe to the utility if not the full veracity of mathematical *truths,* but, except for doctrinaire pronouncements from religion, which are all over the map, often in disagreement, there are no universally agreed to similar axioms for morality and human behavior. What does that leave us with? Are mathematical *truths* somehow very different from other kinds of
*truth?*

JUD EVANS:
For me all of the axioms for morality and human behavior are just ephemeral opinion - look at the changes in attitudes towards sex, homosexuality we have witnessed in our short seventy years of existence.

GARY C. MOORE:
A good comparison and one directly relevant to THE NAME OF THE ROSE. The problems of heresy arise specifically because of commonly held beliefs applied to physical reality. This means locale, social class, and the privileges of the people involved. What is orthodox in Provence is heretical in Italy. What is orthodox in Florence is heretical in the countryside. What is orthodox to Louis the Bavarian is heretical to John XXII. And the change of political and economic situations through time again changes what is *Perfect Truth* month to month, year to year.

RICHARD SANSOM:
For me [for what its worth], as I have opined, probably ad nauseum,
*knowledge* should be defined as only that which is immediately perceived by the senses; all else, included what is contained in memory, is belief.

GARY C. MOORE:
In which case *knowledge* would be a *perfectly* neutral thing that is just *there*, not already belonging in any system whatsoever, not giving any *knowledge* at all until words are experimentally applied and are found to fit - or not to fit - in logical propositions. And those propositions are always subject to change considering the gain of further knowledge which means it is all accidental.

JUD EVANS:
You are right - only *the knowing ones* exist the term *knowledge* is just a helpful reification.