The problem of the soul

[vulcanlogician]

I believe in emergent properties. 

I'm not so sure I believe in emergent properties. Well... I mean... in a mundane sense, emergent properties are real. (like wetness of water etc.) But my thinking is that they can always be reduced to something else. And whatever lies underneath is the true mechanism of causation.

For instance, honey bees gathering nectar. I would want to say that, while it is horribly inefficient, the laws of physics at the atomic level CAN explain the honey bee gathering pollen. Is this the approach biologists use? Hell no. As I said before, it's inefficient. But that doesn't suggest emergent causation. (I guess emergent causation is really what I'm interested in... not emergent properties). As long as (hypothetically) the behavior of atoms could produce a better explanation for the bees gathering honey than the biologist's model, then we can say that physics describes what's going on in a more comprehensive and complete way.

Anyway, I'm not sold on the idea of absolute reductionism. Maybe emergent causation is possible. I've only begun to seriously think about it recently. But reductionism seems more plausible to me right now. I'm open to hearing arguments for emergent causation though.