Gordon H. Clark quotes from The Biblical Doctrine of Man

"Reduce thinking to chemistry and no distinction between truth and error remains.  Behaviorism has committed the suicide of self-contradiction."  Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  The Biblical Doctrine of Man, p. 29.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  The Biblical Doctrine of Man.  1984.  Second edition.  (Jefferson:  Trinity Foundation, 1992).

Obviously, my favorite theologian is the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  I continually read and reread his books and commentaries to gain new insights.  It turns out that reading his works carefully and slowly yields benefits that may have been missed in previous readings done in haste.  Also, it turns out that because Clark thinks in terms of system, his books often hit on various topics that might at first glance appear to be unrelated to the book he is writing at the time.  For example,  how does socialism relate to the biblical doctrine of man?  Yet, Clark's books are peppered with his political views, which in a Christian worldview is inseparable from the system of propositional truths that are revealed both in Scripture and through the innate and a priori categories of the mind in regards to the image of God  (John 1:9; Genesis 1:26-27; 1 Corthinthians 11:7; Colossians 3:10; Genesis 9:6; 2 Corinthians 4:4).  One example of that is when he mentions the philosophical problems of behaviorism and then he immediately transitions from behaviorism and shows how behaviorism relates to socialism and communism and the worldview of the materialists.

In his book, The Biblical Doctrine of Man, Dr. Clark argues that if thinking is merely bodily chemistry or physical movement in the body, then no two thoughts are the same.  Furthermore, abstract thinking is not possible precisely because brain chemistry cannot be demonstrated to produce the same thoughts.  How would one prove that 2 + 2 = 4 is the same bodily function in two different brains and the exact same chemical reaction or electrical reaction in two different brains?  "Since, further, a thought of similarity or comparison cannot occur until there are two items to compare . . .  . . . these thoughts, these motions of bodily parts are not present . . ." in subsequent bodily actions in the individual or in another individual's body, no two thoughts can be identical or even similar (Clark, p. 31).

Devastating as this may be, the argument does not end here.  On the behaviorist view it is not only impossible for one person to have the same idea twice, but it is all the more impossible for two people to have the same thought once.  If Pythagoras had the idea of a triangle, Einstein never learned Euclidean geometry.  . . . The wiggle of a dendritic process in my brain cannot be the wiggle in your brain.  The motion of a bodily part cannot occur in two places, either at the same time or at different times.  (Clark, p. 31).