I don't get no... RE-DUK-SH-UN!

Since unfortunately many people remain unaware, I'd like to dedicate this entry to one of the beneficial yet often overlooked tangential consequences of evolutionary science and genetics. Before you flick that mouse in a boredom reflex, keep in mind that this entry is really about a lot of unimaginative rhetoric that you (yes you!) probably find convincing, or at least compelling, but which is really nothing more than uneducated, uncreative flop.

And here's the flop: Arguments from Irreducibility. Let me give you a famous example of what I mean. It has been argued that the mind cannot be reduced to the biological brain and body. From this, many people have deduced a couple of absurd and unimaginitive things. Firstly, some people have taken this as evidence that the mind and the brain cannot be made of the same basic, fundamental substance. In other words, they take the irreducibility of the mind as evidence for the soul. This is by far the most extreme form of this dogma, but there is also a less extreme form. This lesser form still relies upon the irreducibility of the mind to the brain, but instead merely asserts that the brain is irrelevent in any description or explanation of the mind. Thus, arguments from irreducibility take these basic forms, no matter the subject, whereby the failure to reduce one thing to another is proposed as evidence for the denial of some sort of identity, whether that identity is metaphysical or just descriptive and/or explanatory.

Aside from the example of reducing minds to brains, there are other things which can't be reduced too. This is where genetics and evolutionary science come in, because they give us a model for how different levels of things can build upon one another, even though you can't perform any reduction from one level to the other. For instance, the phenotype cannot be reduced to the genotype. I don't see anyone suggesting, however, that this indicates that the genotype serves no role in any explanation of the phenotype. A lot of people still don't really understand any of this, not even a lot of well-trained professional philosophers, so let me spell it out. Most of the information about your body and its development is actually not contained in your DNA at all. Really, all your DNA really does is map the construction of proteins. It's the proteins, and their behavior when mixed together appropriately, which does most of the work in the further development of your body. Moreover, in this complicated mix of proteins and chemistry, sometimes proteins can actually go back and effect the DNA and how it does its job. For instance, they might set off triggers which turn some parts of the DNA on or off. In some cases proteins can actually go back and change the very structure of the DNA itself. This creates complicated layers of conflict between different levels, whereby the emergent properties of the original instructions actually go on to effect the original instructions themselves. Of course, you can imagine how this could snowball and pile new layers upon new layers, new levels upon new levels.

To help in illustrating this, let's call the original DNA blueprint 'DNA-1', and let's call the newly manipulated DNA blueprint 'DNA-2' (i.e., this is what happens to the DNA after the proteins that were created by DNA-1 go back and effect it). Once you have DNA-2, then you also alter the types of proteins that are being mapped. Thus, DNA-2 goes on to generate a new soup of proteins, which interacts with the old soup of proteins, which creates a whole new level of protein interaction that wasn't even contained within the original protein soup, let alone the original DNA blueprint. Try to really imagine this now. At this point, not only can the new soup of proteins itself contain ways to possibly go back and create a DNA-3, but it isn't even necessarily by itself; The protein soup left over from DNA-1 might interact with the new soup from DNA-2 to create a whole new level of protein interaction, the behavior of which could create a DNA-4 before we even get the chance to talk about a DNA-3. Long story short: a third protein soup is created from the mixture of the one generated from DNA-1 and the one generated from DNA-2, the behavior of which is totally unpredictable given the information contained in either DNA-1 or DNA-2. Hopefully I'm setting off ripples in your mind at this point. Obviously the process doesn't stop here, and it could seemingly go on infinitely, whereby the DNA keeps creating proteins that keep going back and altering the DNA itself. You could end up with DNA-99999999 for all I know.

But this isn't even the end of it. At this point I should distinguish between 'layers' and 'levels'. For instance, DNA-1 and DNA-2 are both examples of different layers within the same level. The difference between levels, on the other hand, is illustrated by distinguishing between DNA and the protein soups that they generate. Thus, the protein soups created by the DNA operate on another level-- that of protein interaction-- than that of the level of the DNA itself. Here's an amazing thing to realize now that I've explained this: In the same way that the layers can build upon each other (DNA-1, DNA-2, DNA-3, etc...) so also can the levels build upon one another. So, we might speak of an esculating complexity of levels too. For instance, in the same way that DNA generates a new level of proteins, the interactions of proteins can also create new levels. In fact, it eventually looks kind of like this: DNA, Protein Soups, Cells, Tissues, Organs, Body Systems, Organism, Behavior, Society, Ecology, etc etc. And of course, as with the way that the level of the protein soups can go back and make changes on the level of DNA, so might any of these levels reach back upon levels before them. Can you even begin to wrap your mind around the intricate complexity with which the DNA molecule builds an organism?

After all of this, here's my point. As the levels build upon themselves, this process continues to esculate until you have a fully functioning human being that can write poetry, fall in love, and invent Incompleteness Theorums. If you have enough of these human beings, then this can esculate until you have fully functioning societies and civilizations. By the way, all of which wouldn't be here at all if it wasn't for that original DNA-1 blueprint, even though absolutely none of it could EVER, in a million billion years even, be predicted-- not even in principle-- based upon that original blueprint. The fact that reduction is an impossible task does not somehow open the doors for supernatural realms, nor does it mean that fundamental levels are not a necessary and important part of the explanation of any phenomenon.

So, arguments against identity which rely upon irreducibility are flawed. Even worse: they're unimaginitive. The creative process itself is a building of levels upon levels, in such an intricate way that a perfect reduction back to the artist is inconceivable. But at the same time, taking the artist out of the art is often to miss the whole point of what is being conveyed. Whether you're building a theory about the mind or a theory about biology (incidentally they probably ought to inform one another!), you must have a strong wish for simple-mindedness to be convinced by the kind of sophistry or rhetoric of an argument from irreducibility alone. In fact, understanding how levels build upon one another in spite of being irreducible is fundamental to an understanding of so many fields of philosophy. Take, for example, the ultimate pursuit of cosmology: To have a theory of everything, whereby the leading theories for the macro-world (Relativity) are seemingly irreducible to the leading theories of the micro-world (Quantum Physics).

On the other hand, if you're so befuddled by the puzzles of irreducibility, then you probably are a brain without a mind.