Posted on 11/20/2005 5:32:28 PM PST by Chi-townChief
An organism can be explained in terms of its component parts, but that doesn't mean it is nothing more than its parts.Of course. But how can materialism account for this? Materialism is inherently reductionistic.
Emergent properties are all around us in the material world. It's a mundane fact of the natural world. I don't see the problem that needs to be "accounted for".
And what exactly do you mean by "accounted for", anyway?
(I'll let you have the last word...)
The fact that we observe or experience particular things (like love, music and organization) is not the same thing as explaining what they are or how they came to be.
My point is that if everything is matter in motion, then everything must reduce to matter in motion. "Love," "music," and "organization" cannot be anything other than matter in motion. But if that is true, how is it that we come to understand these things that seem to exist apart from matter?
No one's arguing the existence of these things. The problem for philosophers is accounting for their existence in a coherent and non-contradictory way.
Darwinists Impose Gag Rule on Science
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2194
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