Re: virus: Rationality

Alex Williams (thantos@decatl.alf.dec.com)
Wed, 26 Feb 1997 19:33:29 -0500 (EST)


> 1 If this is your definition of rational behaviour, then I'd agree
> with you. I was attacking the idea that brains process ideas in a logical
> way... I had a bit of a problem working out whether to talk about rational
> behaviour at all, because I was thinking about David MacFad's "animals that
> eat are rational" post (that's a very scrappy quote, sorry if it's hideously
> inaccurate), and was kind of suspecting that he might mean rational in a
> sort of perceivedy sort of way.

I don't think that `brains process information in a logical way' is a
meaningful phrase at all. What a brain does is excrete certain
chemicals at certain times and shift ionic potential around. That's
it. The very idea of `logical thought' is as illogical as any other
idea, at that level, its a clever abstraction for adjerence to some
model.