Follow up to: The Magical Magician: A Naturalist’s Allegory and Reductionism Made Simple

Imagine, for a moment, three philosophers — we’ll name them Alier, Brennan, and Cynthicles, because those seem like good names for philosophers. All philosophers have really classy, medeval sounding names, right?

Anyways, these three philosophers were heavily scrutinizing a kitchen table, made out of smooth marble. Well, it wasn’t the table itself they were studying, per se, but rather the items on the table. For on the table were five plates, and on the first plate were two slices of bread, on the second plate was a tomato, on the third plate was a bit of lettuce, on the fourth plate was a slice of cheese, and on the fifth plate was some mayonnaise.

Now this situation might seem puzzling to us, but we don’t live in their world, and we can’t take our culture for granted. In the world of Alier, Brennan, and Cynthicles, these ingredients were carefully guarded, and accessible only to the High Philosophers of the University. These ingredients were the subject of much scrutiny and debate.

It all started a decade ago when Brennan first discovered that if you take the tomato, put it on top of the lettuce, and then put that on top of the cheese, and then rub it in mayo before putting it between two slices of bread — with one slice on the top and one slice on the bottom — you get a sandwich.

Now, of course, Alier and Cynthicles rightly dismissed this claim as ridiculous. How can a sandwich arise from a mere combination of lesser ingredients? You can’t just arrange tomatoes and lettuce around and expect a sandwich to arise from nothing!

And it only got crazier when Brennan suggested that you could have make a sandwich out of only some of these ingredients — you didn’t actually need the tomatoes or the mayo! Crazy, indeed!

Instead, only a soul could account for the sandwichness inherent in the sandwich, for no simple arrangement of ingredients could explain why a sandwich tasted so good. It’s utterly bizarre to suggest that mere ingredients could give rise to a sandwich! Where do I find the grandness of the sandwich — surely it is not located in the tomato, or in the slice of bread itself, but in some combination of the whole.

This is why one does not simply construct a sandwich out of basic ingredients, but rather gets it naturally whole in one piece from a Great Elder.

Of course, Brennan offered to make Alier and Cynthicles a sandwich from the ingredients he had provided, assuming such a thing is even possible, of course. They were initially tempted to have him arrested that instant for heresy, but they decided, being professional philosophers committed to the Truth, they would permit him his experiment.

Brennan did so, carefully taking the tomato and laying it on to the first slice of bread. He then took the lettuce and put it on top of the tomato, and followed with the slice of cheese. He then took some mayo and smeared it on the cheese, and then sealed it with a second slice of bread on the top. He offered the result to Alier, expectantly.

Alier and Cynthicles examined closely, but they just weren’t buying it — how could we expect this crafted monstrosity to tase like the great sandwiches of the Elders do? Surely it is a good approximation, but it lacks the spiritual component that separates a sandwich from a mere arrangement of ingredients, and thus has no actual worth except as a flawed replica; but a shadow of what we deal with in our every day lives.

The sandwich simply must be more than the sum of its parts, or it wouldn’t be so tasty or special. Talking about the sandwich as mere arrangements of ingredients is to diminish its value. Thus, Brennan must be wrong, and reductionism must be false. Sure, the sandwich might be part ingredients, but it also has a key, spiritual component.

Anything else is simply not a sandwich. How can non-sandwich give rise to sandwich? It’s like something coming from nothing!

Perhaps we might wonder where poor Brennan went wrong. Brennan thought that the sandwich could be explained with reductionism — that the ingredients was all there was to a sandwich, 100% explained with nothing left over. Does Brennan not know how our culture has come to value and see the sandwich as more than just its ingredients? How does Brennan not realize that it is an insult to our Elders to say their whole and indivisible sandwiches come from lowly ingredients!

Perhaps Brennan fell to the hubris of scientism, thinking that science can explain all there is in a sandwich and that our spiritual culture is irrelevant on this issue. Perhaps Brennan got tempted by rampant empiricism, thinking that his senses told him all he needed to know about sandwiches. Perhaps Brennan succumbed to some personal pride thinking he could capture the Elders’ knowledge of sandwiches for himself.

But his reductionism of sandwiches leaves a lot wanting. The sandwich is a product of spirituality, not some pity assemblage of things.

Brennan has a lot left to explain, and until he does, reductionism simply cannot be accepted by our University.

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