Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00093)

>Human beings have no choice about philosophical laws.  Their beliefs about
>them are unique mixtures of truth and falsehood, but the extent to which a
>belief is true or false depends on the objectively-existing laws
>themselves, not on the subject who has the belief.   


Na, Tom, that's not the way I see it, sorry. I think philosophy, logic and
math are built on some basic assumptions that human beings made to start
with. We all need to live by a belief system, but we don't all base our
belief systems on the same basic philosophies. People who belong to the same
societal group often have similar belief systems, but people of other
societies might base their beliefs on quite a different philosophy or logic.
I have built up my own belief system over the years, by adopting &
discarding certain philosophical and other laws which I considered as they
came came my way. I try to adopt the ones which are the most helpful to me
(and don't harm others). I remember a Theosophical lecturer coming to one of
our meetings, talking about that if everyone were at peace with
him(her)self, there would be peace in the world. I thought that was useful,
so I've been striving for peace withint myself ever since. Also beliefs I
cherished as a child, or young adult, are now no longer useful and have been
discarded for ones more useful to me today. Maybe it was useful for me to
believe in Santa Claus when I was little. Maybe only to give my parents the
joy of thinking how cute I was. It wouldn't be cute now anymore, now that
I've grown up.


>Human beings have discovered some laws of logic and of mathematics. 
>We may use them, but they exist independently of us.  They cannot be
>changed.  

Laws that have changed recently: A quark can be particles or waves; time,
space and matter are interrelated; in view of the pictures sent back by the
Hubbel telescope the universe looks quite different now than it did before;
the origin of the universe was the big bang; when we see the light of a
distant star, we see light emitted perhaps thousands of years ago.

Something exists independently of us, but since we can't perceive the whole
thing, we don't really know what it's like, we can only tell what it seems
like to us. 

> Probabilities exist objectively .  These probabilities can be partially
>perceived, but not changed.

 "Thus I have heard"

Liesel