Reductionism as an approach to human experience is making large inroads into popular psychology and self help books. In this post I'll look at an example from Joe Dispenza.
Quotes and comments;
A. 'More important, if we decide to alter the dynamics of our relationship with a particular person in our life who has been close to us, the change that is represented by heartache and suffering is likely just the chemical feeling that we are missing from ceasing to fire the same synaptic neural networks. [1.]
- Do you see what he's saying? He's claiming that heartache and suffering are just epiphenomenon, and that the 'reality' of our situation exists at the level of neuronal firing. This is reductionism as it plays out in popular psychology. I consider this approach scientism, and I reject it. People were designed to feel emotions and to engage in intimate, loving relationships. This makes emotions the reality, and neuro transmitters (etc.) are the foundation that makes this possible. (Dopamine, in and of itself, has no emotional component; it only produces emotions in organisms designed to use dopamine. The 'magic' is not in the chemical, but in the genetic code that makes use of the chemical. Without the code the chemical is nothing.)
You can see how the reductionist model is tailor made for drug based treatments for mental illness. If suffering is just chemical reactions, then the solution is bound to be some chemical intervention in the system. (Reductionism is far from being merely a ball philosophers kick around; it has life and death implications for everyone's daily life.)
This reductionist approach trivializes human emotion, and human experience. (It's the dehumanization of man.) It belittles and degrades people, treating them as things instead of persons. (As one neuroscientist likes to say; ''people are just walking bags of chemicals.") I don't accept the creationist model because it saves human experience, but this is a positive advantage of it.
- note the use of the word 'just' in his statement. This is a reliable guide to a reductionist interpretation. [emphasis mine]
B. 'Regardless of whether a feeling is positive or negative, it results from the release of certain chemicals. Love (or what we think is love), then, may indeed be all about chemistry. [2]
- We see here the downside to our establishment view of science; of science being equated with materialism. Materialism inevitably leads to reductionism, and all the falsehoods and fallacies associated with it. To equate love with chemicals; to conflate the two, is about as stupid as it gets. Not only does it do away with poetry, but it leads people down the wrong path in their thinking. This is akin to saying a computer is all about electricity. In both cases people are ignoring the most important bit of data, and that's the code that makes both love and functioning computers. Human beings are capable of love because they were designed (by an intelligent being) to be able to love and be loved. It's the coded information in our cells that makes this possible. The chemicals involved in the background of the process aren't determinative of the process; they aren't equivalent to love, but make love possible. If this r. model were correct, you wouldn't need someone to love, all you'd need would be a pill. (You could go on a date with your pill case I guess :=)
Notes;
1. Evolve your brain - Joe Dispenza/323
2. ibid
3. Most of the errors in science (etc.) come from absolutizing partial truths. This is what I see happening in neuroscience. Fascinating discoveries (even momentous ones) have been made, but we mustn't give in to the reductionist temptation and reduce human experience to the material level. To treat people as chemicals is not only false, it's anti-human; inhuman if you will. (As we have death of god theology, so we have death of man psychology.)
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