Hi Amos,

These are good questions you ask.

"But that is exactly the question. What are the laws, or at least patterns, behind the realm of imagination, intention, aspiration, and those non-tangible aspects of experience which seem to play so large a part in individual well-being?"

I agree that these are yet to be determined. But I think that if they emanate from the brain, there is to be biological explanation in the future. Dawkins mentions "memes" to describe some of the results of these "non-tangibles".

"The question also raises the issue of what is "legitimate", as you use the word, when applied to the unknown lands behind the ordinary material frame of operation?"

Science is the map by which we are guided into the unknown lands. The question becomes can we validate any "non-material" references without testing them?

"Trying to reduce this entire spectrum of things down to purely functional and bio-mechanicaql elements does not seem to me to work very well."

It works only as well as our understanding at the moment of what we can verify.
You can say reasonably that science, like democracy, doesn't work very well at times but better than any other method of operation including religion and metaphysics. Being unverifiable except for opinion or "experience", the latter don't work at all.

" If these matters were understood there would be far more efficacious remedies, for example, for people like bitter young Cho of VT fame, because the workings (and restoration) of happiness and sanity would be accessible."

It is my opinion that there are efficacious remedies but they are resisted precisely by those who hold to dogmatic creeds or pooh pooh the role of science. Psychology is an infant science and as we know more about it we see a progression of knowledge that is applicable to social engineering. Cho obviously could have used some help in this area.

I don't see that religion or abstract philosophy is particularly helpful here. I see that the US today has an environment that is conducive to this kind of malady. It is the cancer of violence that has been exemplified from the top down by our present government representatives in the White House. The reliance on religion is apparently not working at all at the State level.

"Faith" will not solve the problem of a Cho. It would be interesting to know the background of Cho. Was he religious? Chances are that he wasn't a freethinking,secular humanist.

As to the question of happiness or sanity, I don't think it requires any religious conviction or an injection of a vague "spirit" to acquire this. Most of the religious people I know are pretty much not that happy because they are guilt-wracked and concerned about their mortality. Many attend their churches out of a duty very much like Sysiphus's (sp?) rock pushing.

No science doesn't always work that well but when it does....................

Frank





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