Comments on: Who We Are (and Who We Can Be)

By: Yep

Yep — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:29:04 +0000

What a compelling lecture. It makes one wonder if we are spiritual or just chemical.

By: Paul Maurice Martin

Paul Maurice Martin — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 14:04:44 +0000

Hi, Yep - It doesn’t have to be one or the other.

To think that because simpler phenomena are found to underlie more complex phenomena reduces them to being nothing but the simpler phenomenon is the reductionist fallacy - or “nothing buttery,” as one of my former professors used to call it.

For example, say it turned out that a particular pattern of brainwave activity were associated with the experience of loving someone. That wouldn’t make love “nothing but” a pattern of brain activity. Love would still be the experience that it is. People wouldn’t start exchanging brain wave graphs on Valentine’s Day - it would still be Hallmark cards.

Well, that was an odd way of putting it! But best I can do in a short space…

By: almostgotit

almostgotit — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:52:05 +0000

Thanks both Yep and Paul for your thoughtful comments. I so appreciate each one (and each of you)

By: Yep

Yep — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:51:12 +0000

Yes, it’s an easy trap to use reductionism to explain-away something that deserves more analysis and thought. That’s too easy and gains nothing. But, I do find it interesting that spirituality has its own set of logic rules. If this were a discussion of magic, most of us would agree that magic is something that we cannot explain. But when we happen to learn the secret behind the trick, we realize it wasn’t in fact magic at all, but just a simple trick of the mind. Of course, C.S. Lewis would likely tell me, I “ought not participate in adult conversation.”