Theos-Talk Archives (June 1995 Message tl00040)

Dan Caldwell asked for feedback from his article in the current
AT.  Having read it once over lightly, I can easily say that it
makes perfect sense to me, more so than anything else I've read
on the subject.  But in fact, without any real analysis of
evidence, I'd come to the same conclusion intuitively, having
unquestionably PERCEIVED (rightly or wrongly) that the old volume
3 material BELONGED with the SD.  That's all vague and naive and
subjective and unscientific, and therefore worthless to anyone
other than the perceiver.  But Dan's work is all the opposites:
clearcut, sophisticated, objective, thorough, and therefore quite
relevant to everyone interested in The Secret Doctrine.

It raises an interesting epistemological question (or rather a
psychological one).  When one has a vague, subjective, intuitive
opinion, and finds evidence that supports it from the plane of
objectivity, one simply responds "oh, yes, that makes perfect
sense, I always figured there was evidence to support that view"
and doesn't scrutinize it thoroughly.  At least I didn't
scrutinize Dan's with much care, but pretty much accepted it
whole.

But one whose vague, subjective, intuitive opinion is CHALLENGED
by the scholar who is being objective, clearcut, etc., tends to
scrutinize the scholar's work with great vigilance indeed, and to
find a gazillion things wrong with it.

Probably best summarized as "the amount and quality of evidence
required to prove a proposition is directly proportional to my
subjective resistance to the possibility of its truth."