COMMENSAL ISSUE 87

The Newsletter of the Philosophical Discussion Group
Of British Mensa

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Number 87 : July 1997

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ARTICLES

2nd June 1997 : Philip Lloyd Lewis

RESPONSE TO THEO TODMAN

I can now take up one or two points from your letter...

There is no question of "letting" or "allowing" people to create their own world - they do it and cannot help doing it, whether we like it or not.
Mutual tolerance might well be inspired by TTR (Two-Tier Reality : see later in this issue of Commensal) but it is not implicit in the basic theory.
Any significant philosophy is dangerous, because if it is powerful it can be misused. Christianity and Marxism come to mind as outstanding examples. But showing that they can be and have been dangerously misused does not constitute a valid criticism of their basic principles.
What is the distinction between beliefs and delusions? We must proceed carefully here. To begin with, all delusions are beliefs but not all beliefs are delusions. And one man's belief is another man’s delusion. You apparently hold (yes?) that you can distinguish objectively between delusory beliefs and non-delusory beliefs, while I maintain that any such distinction - made by you or anyone else - is subjective, varying considerably from person to person and culture to culture. I decide for myself, of course, (and I can always change my mind !) whether another person's belief is a delusion, but I am aware that my judgement is subjective.
Do you really think that "we are insignificant specks" is an objective statement ?! It is a highly subjective value judgement and one that I strongly oppose.
All sorts of statements are "demonstrably" wrong - for some people but not for others. There are no fully objective proofs, positive or negative, of anything: it is a matter of persuasion.

You may be interested in the enclosure - the definitive article setting out TTR theory.

Philip Lloyd Lewis

Previous Article (in Commensal 86)

Philip : while any significant philosophy can be mis-used, my point was that yours denies the very meaning of mis-use. Who can criticise anyone’s world-view ? But if we’re allowed to build our own subjective worlds unrestrained, we’ll bump into other people’s worlds and cause mayhem.

I also think that, while there are many beliefs that may or may not reflect a true state of affairs, and which I wouldn’t dream of passing judgement on, there are many more that are obviously false - and I pointed out a couple in my letter, which you seem to have ignored.

What did you find objectionable in my "insignificant specks" remark - you know, one of 5 billion humans on a planet orbiting one of 100 billion stars in one of 100 billion galaxies, and all that ? We’re objectively insignificant by most measures unless someone gives us significance - maybe God can give us objective significance, but otherwise we have to be given subjective significance in someone’s world view (our own, if no-one else’s).

I just can’t see any sense in "no fully objective proofs ... of anything". I would go along with the view that, because there’s a sliding scale from total uncertainty (precisely how many stars are there in the Andromeda galaxy) to certainty (is Pythagoras’ theorem true in Euclidean geometry) we should invent a "probability of truth" function with statements as arguments, with the values 0 and 1 never assigned in practise. However, it would still be irrational to believe a statement with probability of truth near zero, or doubt one with a value near 1. What has persuasion to do with it ? Are you saying that Pythagoras’ theorem is sometimes true and sometimes false, because some people don’t understand it and therefore can’t be persuaded ?

Note : What follows is an article from the May 1987 edition of Mensa Magazine entitled Two-Tier Reality [TTR].

Theo