Yes, that’s a good point. But if mechanistic physics can fully explain, say, the growth of a human fetus in the womb, then hasn’t it rendered the teleological view that the soul is the organizing principle of the body an unnecessary addition to an already self-sufficient model? Sure, it might not have directly destroyed a teleological understanding of physics, but is leaving it for Occam’s Razor to deal with really that different?
And yet if mechanistic physics cannot explain the growth of a human fetus in the womb, or the decision-making process in the brain, then wouldn’t we expect it to have run into a wall, so to speak, by now? Shouldn’t scientists have encountered observable events inexplicable by mechanistic models alone? I’m not a neuroscientist, but I haven’t heard of any such thing happening.
Food for thought…
Sharp11
I apoligise for this long post, but it is neccesary to my point. I am a writer, so i often fall into the habit of writing novels on issues that i am passionate about. I hope that you will have the patience to read it untill the much welcomed end.
My Mind, In The Eyes Of Science
This is the thing which angers me the most. It is the short sighted idea that just because a quality emerges from a natural process, then that ought to mean that the natural process involved is the ultimate cause of any given quality. Physics certainly explains the means by which qualities unfold; but it doesn’t explain to me why those qualities come into being in the first place. Why should an eye or a central nervous system arise according to any given pattern or structure in nature? I can certainly imagine a universe in which the same processes, patterns and structures, give rise to a completely different set of qualities. What is it that defines the nature of things to such an extent that there is a continuous order in natural events, and that certain qualities are assigned to various emergent structures?
The universe began to exist, so there can be no evolution of qualities before the bigbang. So, when i see a rich expression of quality and order within the universe including “mind”, i can’t help but be overwelmed by a sense of purpose regardless of the natural processes through which these factors emerge. I certainly think that it would be pretty naive and arrogant of me to think that our Universe is the only kind of nature that exists. There seems to be a transcendent reality beyound the bounds of our own.
The problem with science today, is that we have been plagued with reductionism philosophies for far too long; to such extent that we assume from the out-set that “quality” is synonymous with structure. That’s not to say that all apparent qualities are not synonymous with structure. Some qualities are shallow in nature, such as “geometric shapes”; but consciousness and abstract language, is not to be confused with this type of quality; the difference being, is that one of them is measurable and therefore applicable to empirical logic, and the other is not. For example, the numbers 110110 might explain and expose the process and the means by how we get a specific quality, a picture of my face, on our computer screen, but it would be silly, or at least mistaken, to think that the numbers are synonymous in nature to the picture which have just appeared on your screen. They have different dimensions of being to eachother. Although they are clearly complimentary to eachother in respect of function, they evdently have to different natures. The numbers are merely markers which allow pre-determined qualities to arise in an organized and coherent manner according to logic; rather then being arbitrary. The brain is a logic machine which grounds human consciousness in space-time and converts signals in such a way as to allow us a logical coherent view of physical reality.
Another interesting thing is the reality of ideas. The idea that my ideas are fundamentally caused by a grouping of atoms, set in a specific pattern or structure, is an insufficient explanation of the true nature behind ideas; an idea is evidently different to the nature of an atom or a physical object in space-time. You can clearly measure brains states which represent human consciousness, because the states themselves are physical; but you cannot empirically measure or see “consciousness” “perception” or “ideas”, because they have no measurable or quantifiable dimensions, and therefore any attempt to do so with the tools of science, is ultimately “unscientific”. The physical process explains only that there is various things which need to occur “physically” before I am allowed to perceive reality consciously.
Science is limited to measurable quantities, and therefore can only give us a shallow description of what reality is. There are many questions will never be answered by science such as why a mother loves her child and why objects in space-time have dreams and aspirations for the future and philosophies. Some people are starting to wake up to this fact and are now looking for answers in philosophy again, rather then just science. Some people however are still trapped in their stubbornness.
