Summations Only

I fail to see how this response is relevant to anything I have been saying or how it answers any of the questions I have asked of your position.

Can you give an example of some knowledge that is "irrelevant to the (or a) reality", because it's hard to see exactly what you mean here, unless it's another version of your rather obvious point that an investigation is not the thing being investigated.

Yes, it is clear that so far you fail to see my point. I'm sorry.

I think that you are close.The firing neurons are not love, or beauty, or joy, or sorrow and knowing that the process, the mechanics of love or beauty or joy or sorrow is irrelevant to actually feeling love or beauty or joy or sorrow.

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Sure it can be done but does it have the same meaning as the object itself?

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What it means is a subjective interpretation that can once again be defined by a set of neural pathways in a specific chemical state.

Yes, they are. All of those are human emotions defined by the firing of neurons.

Which says nothing about why I think the sky is blue today or what I am feeling when I look at De La Tour's St. Joseph.

If you mean that we can feel those emotions without knowing anything about the process, I would have thought that that's stating the obvious.I'm wondering how we arrived at this point. The causes, mechanics and functions of emotions are certainly things that science asks why and how questions about, which is all that's really relevant to this thread. And it's not even that important to it as science asks plenty of why questions that have nothing to do with humans at all.I suppose that the rarest kind of question that science finds itself asking are the "who" questions. Forensic science in a "whodunit" situation is one example.

Sure it does. Those emotions are the product of the very physical neurons in your brain. It is no different than asking why iron is hard, or water is wet, just more complex.

I'm saying that we feel those emotions and hold those beliefs and experience love and joy and sorrow and happiness regardless of the cause and dealing with neuron firings misses the whole point of the experience.Why does not have but one meaning.Science deals with the mechanical why, philosophy and theology deal with ideal why.

And about as relevant.

Sure, you can say that evolution is just a series of allele changes over time, but does it have the same meaning as the process itself?What's being said is that the meaning is in your mind. Your mind is an emergent property in your brain. Your brain can be studied as to what neurons are firing and when. We've already got rudimentary "mind-reading" programs using fMRI.Feelings and preferences, while strong, are still just chemical and electrical impulses in your brain. They can be induced externally by people with the necessary neurological training...and by con artists.Knowing that the emotions are just that, doesn't take away the effects they have on us...or at least they don't to me.

And ST Joseph can be reduced to pigment and brush stroke, but then it loses its impact and value.

To be extremely reductivist...but if I studied the placement of every drop of pigment that makes up the picture...or every brush stroke that went into it, I could determine the process by which the painting was made. That would make me appreciate it more, and would do nothing to reduce my ability to simply sit back, ignore the technical and enjoy it viscerally.Likewise, I can know that my emotions are neurological and physiological responses to certain stimuli without reducing the impact they have on me or stopping them from sweeping me away in euphoria or melancholy.

Yes, we feel them because they are real, physical things. Philosophy and theology invent the why's.Why are paintings and sunsets pleasing to you? Because that is how your physical brain reacts to the stimuli. That is it.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.