Reducionism loses Phenomena of love and other Values

 


The topic is BT's statement that science tells us everything about feelings and emotions. These are just unimportant side effects of brain chemistry we know all about them and we can ignore them. My suspicion is aroused that these guys really hate being human. They have to ignore their feellings and emotions so as to avoid conviction of sin.

  The words in blue represent what I said in the previous discussion. The ordinary type is my editorial comment for this post.


 Bigthinker on carm

He claims:

Science explains emotions... We are the result of natural selection, "love" facilitates/leads to reproduction. This isn't much of a mystery unless you don't consider the science behind it

Meta:
In the discussion on the board I said:

It depends upon what kind of explanation you are seeking and what aspect of it you are including. Since feelings are so tied to the hard problem you can't answer questions related to that sort of thing until the hard problem is solved. There's also the problem of losing the phenomena which is just the result of reductionism.

The phenomenological aspects that can't be solved by merely understanding brain chemistry.

BT

This gets into the interpretation of the emotion. But if we can predictably manipulate emotions, then our understanding is sufficient; 

Meta:

so the fact that you are willing to stop with the surface even though you can't answer deeper things and you slough that off by saying 'we don't want to know that much.' that just proves that you can't answer it, you don't want to answer it, you are not really seeking understanding but just confirmation of the views you already hold.

BT

we don't necessarily have to know why we interpret an emotion or feeling in a particular way in order to understand it. 

Meta

you think that could be kind of important? All it tells us to manipulate feelings is that feeling are access through brain chemistry; that doesn't' tell us what the feelings are communicating to us.

Did you catch that? "we know all about emotions from sceince."

"here's something you don't know"

"we don't need to know that."

The only knowledge that counts as knowledge is what we can control with our methods. We can be so sure that anything we don't know we just saw off and it's there anymore. So we can reduce it all to what we know then we know it all.


BT

Now, if emotions weren't reliably predictable then that would be a different story.

why? that means all you want to know is how to control people, right?

Meta:

Guess what guys? The wildly unpredictable part is the part he doesn't like so that's the bit he pretends isn't there. So it is the case that are unpredictable so it is a different story but he's going to pretend that it's not.

Meta"

If you wanted to say mothers loving their children is biologically rooted therefore love is nothing more than a chemical process. That's apologizing about something of which we know only surface level. It wouldn't tell us "yes this is the right value" or "no it's not a valid value we can take it away."

BT

Value is subjective and is the result of self awareness. 

 The haters of being human. self awareness is something to ignore. I guess that's what we call "not being self aware."

 Meta

we are dealing with the core of subjectivity, feelings.It's apparent your research program is very subjective. you don't want to know things that might upset your world view. you want to know only that which confirms it. isn't that what you just said?

If we couldn't think about ourselves, then it wouldn't be a value, it would simply be cause and effect.

but then when we think about ourselves you write it off as "subjective." So how can you ever explore your core self when you refuse to even think about having one? Values are subjective and core self is subjective, you have to come to terms with that to study it.

you want to study the subjective form the standpoint of the objective and just eliminate anything that isn't objective. tha'ts losing the phenomena.

BT

Evolutionarily speaking, this has been effective enough for the survival of our species

Meta:

partly because we don't eliminate it as "subjective" but we pay attention to it and base values on it. Moreover, there's a lot more at issue than just finding stuff that helps us survive. you don't want us to continue to survive?

BT

It only makes sense with evolution. It doesn't make sense in a world governed by original sin. If original sin is the guiding force/principle, why should a mother care for her infant? 

 Notice the complete lack of understanding of anything about the Gospel. Because there's sin we shuld give in it, as though the point of the Gospel is not to overcome sin.



Meta

sorry my friend. Not say that I don't respect your view. Yet I think and feel you are working under a somewhat misguided view of what sin means. First of all no one is saying evolution doesn't happen. In the fashion of evolutionary psychology (sociobiology in Sunday go meeting garb) you are trying to account for all behaviors as the result of evolutionary heritage. that doesn't follow, it doesn't follow that if you don't do that they you are denying evolution.

Secondly, evolution doesn't negate the concept of sin. Both things can be true

No it has nothing to do with emotions. I have to wonder at this point if you actually read Heidegger?

You are only thinking of eros. eros is probably just a cultural fiction anyway. There's a much larger concept of love that is rooted in ideals.

It's like the is/ought problem. just showing there is a tendency doesn't prove there a behavior should be perused. You can't establish an ought from an is. By the same token you can't define a value based upon its appearance in brain chemistry. You can' reduce an ideal to brain chemistry.

BT

"oughts" are based in values. Values are subjective. I don't care what a person's philosophical interpretation of feeling they are in love; what matters is that over time, this feeling results in reproductive activity and therefore is selected for.

Meta:
spoken like a true evolutionary psychology guy.

But the idea is that those don't matter, behavior is all that matters. we can ignore the subjective those are philosophical premises. they are also values. you are employing values to make the value judgement that values aren't work dealing with because they are subjective. you are making a value judgement about the subjective.

somehow I don't think that's how we survived. I think we survived taking values seroiusly.

Look at the control you are trying to exert. people who say "this is in contradiction with my most improtant values" you just say "O poo poo values are unimportant." that's our value.

 In this exchange we see several things clearly. The illusion of technique creates the pretense that science tells all and yet what it can't tell us they just reduce and lose the phenomena and refuse to think about it. See how programatic their view is.  They have an ideological objective that is to eliminate values so that their notion of truth is all pervasive. Truth is defined as only that which can be determined by their methods and that which supports their ideology.