On 9/27/2012 8:06 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Thursday, September 27, 2012 12:32:38 AM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 9/26/2012 9:27 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:On 9/27/2012 12:19 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> <javascript:> wrote:The problem is the assumption that they can only be one thing if they aren't the other. This kind of dualism is a prejudice of a particular phase of scientific development that is overdue for reconciliation. By framing it as 'understandable vs mysterious' instead of public-spatial vs private-temporal, we close off all possibility for progress. Do you think that I don't know how effective the reductionist approach has been for Western Civilization? The Catholic Church was deemed equally effective during Galileo's time. You misunderstand my perspective and assume that I am talking about some new force outside of physics when what I am doing is showing a way of integrating the obvious conditions of our experience with physics. I think that realizing that cells are also our sub-personal experiences will be the next two centuries of biological science.But where do you get the idea that replacing a part of a cell with an equivalent part will make a difference to the cell? You're speculating that there is some special thing going on in cells that only you know about and that has never been observed in centuries of laboratory research. Isn't that a little bit arrogant?No, Stathis, Craig is pointing out that functions are not separable in the real world. Nature does not build things in a gears and spring method, every part of a cell is an integral part of a whole. If we are to replicate the function of a cell exactly we must literally replicate all aspects of a cell, or else we are making something completely different.And you know this...how? BrentBecause of mortality and morbidity. Cells die. Bodies die. They cannot be revived, even with formaldehyde and electricity. If you cut a rat in half and then meticulously sew it back together, you still have two parts of a dead rat. We know from our own experience as well - we can't replace our youth with an equivalent part. Quantum wave functions may not seem to care whether time runs forward or backward, but experience does. We can't take out a part of a story and expect it to make sense in the same way, just as we can't replace words in a sentence and have it make sense in the exact same way. Interchangeability is not a given.
Neither is non-interchanability. Rats can have their cells modified to produce luceferin, so they glow in the dark. But they are still functioning rats. Rats can have genes removed and still reproduce and be functioning rats (that's why we know there is some 'junk' DNA). Your logic is a little screwed up: X can't be interchanged with Y, doesn't imply ~Ex(x can be interchanged wiht Y).
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