From: jd4p+@andrew.cmu.edu (John Ethan DeGraaf)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Things to think about!
Date: 24 Aug 92 00:41:20 GMT


  > Essentially  everything  is reducable to  science.  Likewise 
  >everything  is  reducable to the physical. 

If this is the case, then we can't control any of our actions, because
our brains (as opposed to minds, which includes non-physical thoughts
and ideas) are made up of chemicals, which trigger our every action.
Therefore, Hitler couldn't help but to kill all of those Jews, because
he had no ability to think (non-physical), but was completely controlled
by the fatalistic changing of chemicals in his brain that controlled his
actions. Therefore, none of us can ever help anything that we do, so
don't EVER complain about anybodies actions, because s/he simply can't
help it. (Of course you also couldn't control anything you did either,
including complaining.)

Concepts were also mentioned throughout this message. A cocept is NOT
physical. Ever physically touch, see, taste, smell, or hear a concept?
NO!!
What we hear are sound waves. If we were all deaf we would still have
concepts. The idea of a concept goes completely against your initial
presupposition.

[It's possible to view all thought and concepts as ultimately
explainable on a physical basis.  However even in that case the sort
of view that reduces everything to atoms doesn't do much good.  In
that case all we'd have would be particle physics.  There would be no
room for chemistry or biology.  In fact, even in areas where we
believe that *in principle* everything in reducible to physics, it's
not practical to do science on that basis.  Imagine trying design a
building by modeling the behavior of the quarks that make it up.  In
practice, there are a number of levels of explanation, each of which
has its own area of applicability.  Even if we believe that nothing
more than the physical going on in thinking, there would be many
levels of explanation between the indivisible atoms and the kinds of
models that are useful in understanding thinking.  Frankly, it's not
clear to me that it makes much difference whether we believe that
everything is reducible to physics.  In practice, we're going to have
to deal with human decisions using an appropriate level of
description.

However I also have a problem with your response.  The fact that you
can't see a concept is irrelevant.  We could use the same argument to
prove that a computer can't do data processing.  Open up a computer.
All you'll see is a bunch of hardware.  You won't see any programs or
any data.  All the interesting stuff is embodied in the state of
the circuits in the computer.  Similarly, if you want to type a
mechanistic view of the brain, concepts wouldn't be associated with
any specific chemical or structure, but in patterns of the state
of neurons.  You wouldn't expect to be able to touch a concept.

I don't mean to be arguing here for or against the view that there is
a separate immaterial soul.  However I'm saying that neither the
original posting nor the response is using models that are at a level
of sophistication necessary to deal with human thought and
decision-making.

--clh]