Y'know, Amos... your reply to my long post was essentially your USUAL reply to some of the issues I often discuss at other times. I am not sure what you 'thought' you read that made you plug in the usual mind/body dichotomy and revert to the 'babies & bathwater' metaphor, but I was not 'throwing out' anything in that post. I said nothing about "bio-mechanics of the brain", and was not even trying to approach that debate... and my real point about how to achieve that 'bridge' between different approaches seems to have been lost.


mousethief: ": you are equating "good thinking" with "scientific thinking."
   No, that's not exactly what I am doing at all. I DO suggest that they are related, because you can't have 'good science' with 'bad thinking'.
As a matter of fact, I agree that "There are some questions that are worthwhile and meaningful that are not scientific questions.", and I alluded to that within my post.
All I was trying to do (besides the historical perspective ON science and logic) was to show that ... lemmee see.... that IF one employs 'bad thinking'...that is, starts with premises that are obviously false or gratuitously subjective and then are linked in a logically fallacious manner, it follows that the conclusions have limited ....*long pause*.... limited ..ummm... relevance and 'substance'. They have less *power to convince*.
Everyone will see this if we use examples they agree with and see the sequence....whether it's about gardening, geology, sanitation or map reading.... but when the topic is a personal 'sacred cow', they suddenly don't LIKE to look directly at the logical fallacies involved.
   Now, let me state clearly that I do realize that it IS possible to achieve either a true conclusion or a valuable, relevant one even if the method employed is flawed... "even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes"... or "even a blindfolded darts thrower hits the target now & then"...etc. But there ARE more efficient & productive ways to achieve goals, and I flatly assert that using demonstrably 'bad thinking' is more likely to produce questionable answers.

I am not sure how anyone can dispute the basic sense of this claim, but I sure notice that the more specific the topic is, the easier it seems to be for people to harrumph and refuse to even consider that their coveted 'answer' is either exempt from analysis, or that the analysis is wrong.
Nietzsche once illustrated this succinctly with a 'quote' from an old woman, saying "Of course it was a just war! My son died in it!"
She simply could not cope with any logical or factual analysis of the 'justness' of the war.
   Today we see this happening with 'global climate change', with disputes over what taxes are justified, with how immigration should be handled, with disputes over Obama's birth certificate,...and we see 'denial' among smokers, among the obese over why they ARE obese, and in people who choose to live in areas which are subject to flooding or landslides or fires. They just insert premises that they like and link them so that they reach the decision that is comfortable for them. It is often obvious why they DO resort to 'bad thinking', but anyone who is NOT emotionally committed to their position can usually see the flaws in their reasoning.

....see? I rest my case... ☺