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Taste—in fact all experience—can be reduced to to three categories: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral.

It can be reduced even further. All the way down to biochemical reactions.

Still there is a qualitative difference between you and a paramecium or a stalk of corn. Reductionism is useful, but inaccurate when taken as all truth; because it reduces truth as well.

1,408 posted on 02/15/2011 6:55:01 AM PST by D-fendr (Deus non alligatur sacramentis sed nos alligamur.)

It can be reduced even further. All the way down to biochemical reactions

Of course it can, but as far as we are concerned it is irrelevant. The same can be said of the rainbow. We don't care what is taste on a biochemical level but how we experience it. Do you think of a t-bone steaks as animal body parts or as tasty, jucy meal?

Still there is a qualitative difference between you and a paramecium or a stalk of corn. Reductionism is useful, but inaccurate when taken as all truth; because it reduces truth as well.

Sounds good, but what is truth? Is the paramecium any less true than I? No, just less relevant to me, as I am less relevant to a paramecium. Do fish mind if it's raining?

1,409 posted on 02/15/2011 9:30:50 AM PST by kosta50 ("Spirit of Spirit....give me over to immortal birth so that I may be born again" -- pagan prayer)

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