Yes and no? I don't see much wrong with believing in a purely physical world, from a scientific perspective (atoms give rise to molecules give rise to cells give rise to tissue give rise to organs). Though it definitely falls over when doctors / scientists think that mass-blanking some receptor with a drug will somehow fix a person's problems. Sure, drugs may work, but sometimes it may be more effective to fix a person's head through purely psychological approaches. Or am I misinterpreting what you said?That animal experience is a product of cell function alone is one of the more banal of the hubristic attitudes kept by many scientists (neuroscientists being some of the worst offenders),
There are things we can't predict, because they're too complex. These problems will be solved in time. There are things we can't predict, because they're too chaotic, so effectively they're not determinate systems. These problems we can always estimate better with more information. Then there are things we can't predict, because the problems don't lend themselves, in principle, to the typical materialistic type evaluations. Language, for example, is a metaphysical phenomenon (I mean the language itself, not the way each of us produces it). Psychology exists somewhere on the boundary of language and biology, and is thus not entirely penetrable to biologic investigation.
Ah, makes sense, and a bit different from what I was saying. I don't completely agree, but that's because my current attitude towards the brain is still: "we hardly understand any of it!" Who knows, maybe the things we refer to as thought loops will actually turn out to be giant interconnected loops of neurons signaling each other. Maybe emotions may turn out to have a purely and predictably physical basis. But it's still all maybes in my mind.Psychology exists somewhere on the boundary of language and biology, and is thus not entirely penetrable to biologic investigation.