Helping friends you deeply love with the process of moving is the most melancholy event one can experience, especially when you know despite what is said between you, that you won't see each other again
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the nature of sciencektlAugust 15 2008, 19:38:05 UTC
But I have to disagree - Science can't know that life is "merely" anything. It can know that life involves matter organized in a particular manner, but it can't claim to give any "complete" answer to a question such as "what is life?", it can't use words like "merely".
Science can't even give an adequate answer to the question "What is this sliver of wood?" If a chemist claimed that "this sliver of wood is merely a particular concoction of molecules", he would be wrong. Why? Because a physicist could reply "no, this sliver of wood is an arrangement of atoms with various numbers of electrons in constant flux." And a biologist could object that "No, this sliver of wood is merely a particular arrangement of a certain type of cells." And a botanist could object that "no, this sliver of wood is merely a piece of a pine tree from a particular species with a particular genetic code". And of course a dentist would say "No, this sliver of wood is merely a toothpick for cleaning my teeth."
Words like "merely" or "only" don't apply to scientific conclusions. Science does not aim to boil things down to discover their true "essences" independent of all human experience. In place of trying to determine what "really" is the case, empiricism changed the world by just trying to find the patterns in repeated observable events. It's interest isn't in some sort of final "truth" but rather in maximizing simplicity, coherence, and predictive power.
With that context . . . I agree of course that cognitive science could succeed in providing an explanation for mental processes which uses only the terms of chemistry, or physics, or some other language game. But would that be a complete explanation of what we mean by "mind" that would make all language games we use for talking about the mind outdated? It doesn't seem that way to me -- no more than "continued reaction to change" comes close to getting at the complex and rich meanings we associate with the word "life".
In the same way, taking "Jeff Watson is the culmination of experiences made by a specific biological vessel", this phrase is no closer to reality than "Jeff Watson is an individual" or "Jeff Watson is a camcorder in the middle of an carbon sandwich". All of these phrases are metaphors -- there is no such thing as a "biological vessel" any more than there is a "carbon sandwich" or an "individual". All of these are human interpretive acts imposed on top of reality so that we can understand it better.
So, getting back to the mind question . . . the very statement that "some person does not feel pain because he lacks certain neurons" would contradict the statement that "pain is just neurons firing". Of course, if pain equals neurons firing, there would be no way to test for pain except to look at neurons, and there would be no "person" involved "feeling" the pain. Just because X implies Y and Y implies X does not mean that X = Y, this is a basic rule of logic.
All this sums up why I don't think science can comment on ontological questions -- it can't say what exists or not, it can only describe the relations between the things we tell it that exist. No amount of empirical observation and data would be enough to conclude that the two of the floating orbs of carbon-compounds in your house are "dogs" since one cannot observe the concept of a "dog" (for that matter, one can't observe the concept of "carbon" or the concept of an "atom"). Only a human interpreter can say whether dogs exist or not. The same would apply to the soul, wouldn't it?
Science can't even give an adequate answer to the question "What is this sliver of wood?" If a chemist claimed that "this sliver of wood is merely a particular concoction of molecules", he would be wrong. Why? Because a physicist could reply "no, this sliver of wood is an arrangement of atoms with various numbers of electrons in constant flux." And a biologist could object that "No, this sliver of wood is merely a particular arrangement of a certain type of cells." And a botanist could object that "no, this sliver of wood is merely a piece of a pine tree from a particular species with a particular genetic code". And of course a dentist would say "No, this sliver of wood is merely a toothpick for cleaning my teeth."
Words like "merely" or "only" don't apply to scientific conclusions. Science does not aim to boil things down to discover their true "essences" independent of all human experience. In place of trying to determine what "really" is the case, empiricism changed the world by just trying to find the patterns in repeated observable events. It's interest isn't in some sort of final "truth" but rather in maximizing simplicity, coherence, and predictive power.
With that context . . . I agree of course that cognitive science could succeed in providing an explanation for mental processes which uses only the terms of chemistry, or physics, or some other language game. But would that be a complete explanation of what we mean by "mind" that would make all language games we use for talking about the mind outdated? It doesn't seem that way to me -- no more than "continued reaction to change" comes close to getting at the complex and rich meanings we associate with the word "life".
In the same way, taking "Jeff Watson is the culmination of experiences made by a specific biological vessel", this phrase is no closer to reality than "Jeff Watson is an individual" or "Jeff Watson is a camcorder in the middle of an carbon sandwich". All of these phrases are metaphors -- there is no such thing as a "biological vessel" any more than there is a "carbon sandwich" or an "individual". All of these are human interpretive acts imposed on top of reality so that we can understand it better.
So, getting back to the mind question . . . the very statement that "some person does not feel pain because he lacks certain neurons" would contradict the statement that "pain is just neurons firing". Of course, if pain equals neurons firing, there would be no way to test for pain except to look at neurons, and there would be no "person" involved "feeling" the pain. Just because X implies Y and Y implies X does not mean that X = Y, this is a basic rule of logic.
All this sums up why I don't think science can comment on ontological questions -- it can't say what exists or not, it can only describe the relations between the things we tell it that exist. No amount of empirical observation and data would be enough to conclude that the two of the floating orbs of carbon-compounds in your house are "dogs" since one cannot observe the concept of a "dog" (for that matter, one can't observe the concept of "carbon" or the concept of an "atom"). Only a human interpreter can say whether dogs exist or not. The same would apply to the soul, wouldn't it?
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