From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> "Michael Gazzaniga, who conducted some of the split-brain >> experiments, has said that language is merely the 'press agent' >> for other parts of the mind; it justifies whatever acts they >> induce, convincing the world that the actor is a reasonable, >> rational, upstanding person. >The foregoing may be true, but if it is, it >asserts it is not true but only a "rationalization", >and thereby loses all its argumentative force, so that, >for purposes of knowledge (science, etc.) >it might just as well not have been said at allm, and >a dog's barking could substitute for it. That's the point Brad, we are preprogrammed to bullshit others and ourselves just exactly like a dog is preprogrammed to lift his leg and mark bushes in his territory. Like the dog, our genetic urge to propagate our genes drives our endless quest for power over our environment (both social and physical). We employ our large brains to outwit and outbullshit our competitors and ourselves. What we say and think has only one preprogrammed objective: to propagate our genes. >Yours in the unfashionable >belief that words (at least my own, >and, perhaps, yours...) have meaning, but >that this condition is *very fragile and >subject to being lost at any moment if >we've not very care-ful*.... Perhaps we could say that words have no "meaning", but they do have a purpose: more sex. Jay -- www.dieoff.org
