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How do we understand a feeling?

rangrz said:
The reductionist approach has proved VERY successful in ALL of the sciences, as it it explains things in the highest level of detail. So, I think as our discoveries in the sciences continue to grow, emotional states will be understood in terms of smaller and smaller things, just like chemistry, physics, geology, biology, etc have been going to smaller and smaller things.
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Does it explain things in the highest level of detail, or does it simply output the greatest amount of data? I'm getting at "meaningful detail" here. You've already agreed about the impracticality of trying to explain subjective states on a quantum level, but still seem to hold onto the hope that it somehow COULD become practical.

Let's take the field of biology, for example, and look at the mating rituals of hippos - the males will crap and piss all over themselves and fling their filth around to create the biggest mess possible and seduce the ladies. Do you think that an analysis at the level of molecules would provide as much meaningful detail as naturalistic observation (even before attempting to quantify or experimentally control circumstances)? I think a video recorded instance would be much more valuable. Who cares what the hippos' molecules or atoms or quantum particles are doing? It's not like something special is going on like an atom splitting inside the hippo, the atoms are just doing typical atom-like things. The hippos, on the other hand, are doing something very unique in their day to day life.
 
Look at using molecular biology to explain, well, pretty much everything in medicine, pharmacology and physiology, including seemingly macroscopic things like strokes. (Both to explain how the thrombosis forms and why the lack of perfusion to the brain causes the cells to become necrotic.) or Gangreene from an infection. (By explaining how the bacterial toxins lyse the cells.)
 
What if we just skipped the molecules and explained stokes in terms of atoms - if an extreme reductionist point of view is accurate, there would be no need for any model involving things called "molecules". Do you think that atoms would be sufficient, or do you think we would regret doing away with a conception of molecules?

My point being that I definitely agree in the usefulness of studying things that are very small, that they are highly complementary to descriptions of reality at other levels. But to take one level of reality as being inherently more useful or detailed than another, simply because it is smaller, is something I disagree with. To tie it back to feelings, any attempt to describe feelings PURELY in terms of physical processes would be missing a lot.
 
Molecules can not be separated from atoms. In order to explain the molecule, you need understand how the atoms work. (E.g. There electronegativity/positivity and the other things that cause them to bond to each other in the way the do/react with other molecules the way they do.) Molecules have an electron cloud just like atoms, properties of which can be worked out using Schrodinger's equation. It's much more complicated because of the increasing number of interacting bodies. It's usually done using computational chemistry techniques involving supercomputers or distributed computing. (Folding@home is essentially doing this, and indeed it is advancing our understanding of protein related diseases.)

Of course abstraction layers are useful and no, the physician in the E.R. doesn't need to do some truly mind bending mathematics to know that she needs to give you a thrombolytic, and the radiologist who gives her the diagnosis of ischemic stroke doesn't need to do a billion Feynman diagrams describing the virtual photons interacting with the protons in your brain in order for him to give her the information she needs. However, the engineers and physicists who made the MRI needed to understand and work with quantum field theory in order to make that MRI and as our ability to model these interactions improves, they will revisit that design to make it work better. More importantly, understanding that theory in the first place was required to even have the concept of an MRI. The chemists and pharmacologists who come up with the thrombolytic had think about atoms, electrons and molecules and how they react and why. The more capable we are of answering the little details, the more they will be able to make better medicines to treat the thrombosis.

I believe that as we get more understanding of the small details of the brain, and better ability to work with that/calculate things about it, the more insight we will gain into the brains functions, like emotions and feelings.
 
I agree with a lot of your points, rangrz. The target of my arguments has been the point of view of an extreme reductionist, and I don't believe that's what you are, at heart.
 
I am and I'm not...I guess? I do think that reductionist techniques are highly useful and understanding the basic pieces of things is needed in order to understand the thing itself. But I don't deny that the big thing exists, that it has emergent properties, or that one can create abstraction layers to hide the small details when they are not essential. The abstraction layer however will be more accurate if we do at least keep a general idea of how the small things work in mind.
 
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