FWIW, I am an emergentist. It seems that this view comes naturally to computer scientists and software developers. If I understand them correctly, some cognit

FWIW, I am an emergentist. It seems that this view comes naturally to computer scientists and software developers. If I understand them correctly, some cognitive neuroscientists such as Michael Gazzaniga are beginning to think seriously about this perspective on the mind-brain problem. Abstraction is as powerful in nature as it is in software. DNA is an amazing abstraction that essentially precludes physics from having a vote in the information content of the genes, and relies instead on an entirely new logic at a higher abstraction level, namely evolution. Grasping for other metaphors, there is a profound complementarity between a great violin and a transcendent performance, but nonetheless Stradivarius and Heifetz were geniuses in different categories. Steinway and Horowitz. Without a piano there is no Horowitz, and everything Horowitz does is translated via the piano and physics to the audience. But, the music is at a qualitatively different abstraction level than the physical piano. So, my current (interested layperson's) view: The human mind and the human brain are complementary yet distinct phenomena. While every mind-event has a physical representation in the brain, and without doubt many physical abnormalities in the brain can manifest in the mind and can therefore be treated by treating the brain, working reductively up from the brain toward the mind as the only acceptable path for treating all mental patients will IMHO eventually run afoul of an abstraction barrier similar to the one physics runs into at the level of DNA.