Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!hao!seismo!harvard!godot!ima!ism780b!jim From: jim@ism780b.UUCP Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Re: Re: Torek on Skinner (determinism & Message-ID: <58@ism780b.UUCP> Date: Thu, 18-Oct-84 00:34:14 EDT Article-I.D.: ism780b.58 Posted: Thu Oct 18 00:34:14 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 15-Oct-84 01:49:25 EDT Lines: 0 Nf-ID: #R:wucs:-39700:ism780b:27500052:000:2652 Nf-From: ism780b!jim Oct 10 00:17:00 1984 >It's a typical reductionist >fallacy: show that you can explain B in terms of A, and then pretend that >B is somehow less real or less important than A. It ain't so. Explaining >human behavior does not explain it away. I think this is the crux. Reductionists don't seem to realize that discussions about human bahavior and discussions about chemicals are discussions about *different things*, and the fact that one is composed of the other does not mean they are discussions about *the same thing*. One can discuss human behavior; one can discuss chemicals; one can discuss the implications of our knowledge about chemicals on our knowledge about human behavior, *and vice versa*, but it is a mistake to think that once we know all about chemicals we know all about human behavior, just as it is a mistake to think that once you know all about machine instruction sets you know all about optimizing programs. We talk about human behavior as opposed to chemicals because human behavior is an extremely complex and non-obvious manifestation of chemical reactions for us limited humans, and *because human behavior is interesting in its own right*. No matter how much we understand about molecular behavior, we will still talk about fluid mechanics as a separate subject. Just because we can formulate Peano axioms doesn't mean that the algebraic topologists can all go home. Explaining the components does not explain the whole, no matter how completely implicit the whole is in the components. But as a reductionist, you won't see that the nature of human discourse is independent of the mechanistic, hierarchic nature of the universe. And you won't see that your ability to accept the case of fluid mechanics or algebraic topology but not human behavior is politically motivated. Behaviorists, sociobiologists, libertarians, and free-marketeers cling to their beliefs because they justify certain behaviors and policies, not out of a neutral attempt to determine truth. Saying that human behavior is completely the result of chemical interactions states a materialistic view that some idealist types might have trouble with, but your average non-reductionist or non-behaviorist would certainly not disagree with it, and to think otherwise is to set up a straw man. But saying that human behavior is "just" the result of chemical interactions bears with it the false implication that we are capable of determining human behavior given our knowledge of chemical reactions, or that we will be able to completely understand human behavior given enough knowledge about chemical reactions, which is stupid and arrogant. -- Jim Balter (ima!jim)