The Future of Biological Theory?

In our recent lectures that have focused extensively on the biological explanations of psychology (in addition to the illustrative videos) I’ve gotten the impression that it could (and might be inclined to)  explain just about every disorder of the mind through purely physiological explanations. This is definitely helpful in that the more accurate we in describing the problem, the more accurate our solutions might also become. Despite this benefit, it has a tendency to inadvertently to reduce what makes us human to a simplistic exchange of nervous signals (or the lack of this exchange in the case of disorders). In its own way, it kind of robs us of the human element.

As already explained it class, very little of the community are extremist enough to believe everything is biological, but it surprises me as more and more becomes readily explainable through mostly biological means. I wonder if the day will eventually arrive when most, if not all of our mental processes are explainable through physiological phenomenon, and just what that would imply should it ever come to pass. It brings to mind the thought that perhaps everything that makes us human, our experiences, memories and emotions might not be nearly as unique or personal as we thought. Could everything that makes up each one of us in some (maybe not so) distant future be recreated through the proper stimulation of certain parts of the brain (and the proper genetic sequence at birth)?

The implications of such a reality are a little jarring (should science actually get so far). What does this imply about us? Is the physical arrangement of matter really what makes each and every one of us? Or is it something deeper inside each mind that science has yet to discover? What does this imply about the soul, and if related, what role does it play in who we are and what makes us so differentiated? I guess it kind of ties back to that age old debate of empiricism vs. rationalism, in that it’s hard to say (at least for now) how much of ourselves we ought to attribute to the mental/rationalistic world and how much to the physical, material one. Part of me wouldn’t be disappointed if that was a question to which we never found a concrete answer.