Interesting evolution article., page 1

Originally posted by Bigwhammy
If this argument by TheWalkingFox is just a product of chemical reactions in his brain then we have no reason to believe it is true.

It's only untrue if your version of truth involves believing things that are not factual and supported by evidence. Yup, what you read is the product of a complex variety of chemicals and electrical impulses. This is actually demonstrable. Might I direct you to the Neuroscience department?

Human thought and behavior is not reducible to simple physicalist terms in this trite manner. For if it is true it ultimately leads to physical determinism, which entails not only the denial of moral responsibility but also the denial of human rationality. Thus it is quite a self defeating position.

Unfortunately for your argument, it IS absolutely physical. I'm not sure why you feel this impacts morality. Morality is a social survival reaction. Basically we've learned that X behavior is rewarded in our society, while Y behavior is punished in our society, and we will thus generally act in accordance with X, unless we get the notion that acting according to Y will benefit us more.

Thus do even the most moral people succumb to sin, now and again

"Rationality," however, is pretty much a myth. It's an effort to pretend we're some special creature, aloof and separate from the world around us. This is pretty much false, and you can see the failure of rationality as a concept in the fact that most people behave VERY irrationally most of the time.

The evidence points to the fact that we are much more than physical. So a better description is that your immaterial mind makes a decision which then triggers a biochemical response triggering electronic impulses through your nerve cells.

What evidence is this?

Did you know that when you move your hand, your hand is moving before you even think about it? Basically your hand starts to move, and communicates its decision to move to your brain, which either allows the move to happen, or sends an impulse to alter or cease movement.

Welcome to instinct and the reptile brain.

Of course our physicality affects our immaterial mind but it is very clear that we have a thought life (dreams for example) that is not bound to the material.

Again, dreams are simply synapses firing. They are, for practical purposes, our brains filing recent memories, occasionally triggering older memories, and doing do without the usual "filter" routines that we utilized while awake. I'm afraid I can't explain it very well, but there IS plenty of research on the subject of dreams, and yes, they are biological.

Sure this issue is debated heavily in science and philosophy but the vast majority of scholars favor some form of dualism or at least emergentism, but this mind-body identity position you advocate is on the lunatic fringe can not explain human choice or rationality - in fact it completely undermines reason entirely.

Which scholars? Who? In what fields?

Hate to tell you, but philosophy is pretty much what happens when people who don't understand how the world works try to advertise their own ignorance. Often it involves an absolute refusal to accept the facts of reality, instead coming up with a far more convoluted and bass-ackwards scheme that makes the philosopher feel comfortable and special.

Human choice is easy to explain. At the most basic, we act according to what we believe will most benefit us. This is complicated by measures of risk and return, which are in turn formed by prior experience and education. For instance, a suicide bomber. Take some random fellow off the street and ask if he wants to die in an explosion along with a dozen other people, and he's pretty much bound to say no. However if he's been convinced that those dozen other people are a dire threat to his own family? Or if he's been taught that performing this act will actually lead to an eternity of comfort and pleasure?

"Reason" is simply making judgments based on the evidence at hand, another example of our head-meats giving a cost / benefit analysis. The evidence is that tomatoes are edible, so if I were to start claiming they were not, not only would I have to not eat tomatoes (which are yummy and nutritious,) but the rest of my society will think worse of me.

For those in the know...

Job 32:7-8

I said, 'Let days speak,
and many years teach wisdom.'
But it is the spirit in man,
the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand.

I personally would not look for scientific knowledge in a book that insists plants existed before the sun, that clouds are dust from a sky-dwelling man's feet, and that otters are a sort of fish.