Hah, I've read that Floridi book - pamphlet, really - but unfortunately found it so painfully average that I think that connection would have escaped me entirely. — StreetlightX
Perhaps you could clarify/answer the symbol grounding problem Floridi raises (i.e., "how data can come to have an assigned meaning and function in a semiotic system like a natural language")? — Galuchat
I still think this understanding of reductionism is mostly right, but I think it can also be expanded. P. W. Anderson, the Nobel prize-winning physicist, draws out what I think are the implications of denying this kind of - let's call it - 'one-way street' reductionism: "The main fallacy in this kind of thinking is that the reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a 'constructionist' one: The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the science, much less to those of societies". (Anderson, "More Is Different"). — StreetlightX
Here is one of the clearest primers I know, although it explains it through reference to Merleau-Ponty. — StreetlightX
Excellent post!This 'inability to reconstruct the universe' from first principles is, I think, the exact corollary of understanding reductionism as context-invarience: it means that there is no one-way street, and that explanation (of any phenomenon) needs to be (at least) 'two way' - context matters. — StreetlightX
Phenomena and processes are 'complex' in the philosophical sense (of course, that is also true if strictly science). Reductionism in the true sense of existence denies the complex and what's left is ultimately the indivisible something -- say an atom. I don't suppose the (old) traditional reductionists would want to change the entire meaning of their endeavor. Reductionism is about what is ultimately cannot be denied.
I realize I am sort of defending the traditional reductionism even through I am not a follower of this school of thought. — Caldwell
I can't imagine anything more radical. Quantum mechanics is easier because I don't have to understand it, I only have to believe that things behave the way scientists say they do.
— T Clark
I can't imagine anything more radical. Quantum mechanics is easier because I don't have to understand it, I only have to believe that things behave the way scientists say they do. — T Clark
A while ago, I wrote this, on the topic of 'reductionism': — StreetlightX
Serious. As I said, QM is just the way things are. I don't feel any ontological agita. Why would you expect things to behave the same at atomic scale as it does at human scale. I hate it when people, even physicists, get all excited and talk about "quantum weirdness" as if they're Neil DeGrasse Tyson, that son of a bitch. This stuff makes me rethink how the universe works. — T Clark
Serious. As I said, QM is just the way things are. I don't feel any ontological agita. Why would you expect things to behave the same at atomic scale as it does at human scale. I hate it when people, even physicists, get all excited and talk about "quantum weirdness" as if they're Neil DeGrasse Tyson, that son of a bitch. This stuff makes me rethink how the universe works. — T Clark
"I had found that phenomenology and hermeneutics were helpful in making sense of the distinction between classical physics and post-classical physics of relativity and quantum mechanics because these new philosophies had the capacity to explore the latent significance and function of context in both scientific traditions; ‘context’ was arguably the central innovative component of these physical theories that had revolutionized 20th century physics." — Pierre-Normand
(Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway) — StreetlightX
It's odd isn't it? I mean, the idea that context matters is so simple an idea, yet it is routinely ignored despite it. And it provides such a simple retort to those who believe in atoms or genes or whathaveyou as constituting any kind of 'fundamental ground' for the rest of the world. Yet the only thing that's 'fundamental' is that everything can function differentially, depending on the context which explicates it: — StreetlightX
It doesn't seem as though this would be controversial, so how can any smart, competent physicist claim that physics can be reduced to particles spinning around in isolation from the rest of the world? — T Clark
So, just because microphysical phenomena can be effectively amplified by macroscopic apparatuses that interact with them, the finiteness of Planck's constant (i.e. the fact that it's larger than zero) has direct consequences for the structure of the phenomena that we can observe at the macroscopic scale, such as interference patterns. This constraint also undercuts the idea that the microscopic events that are being probed have their determinations independently from the instrumental contexts in which they are being measured, or so have Bohr and Heisenberg argued. — Pierre-Normand
Thinking a little about this in terms of information, part of what it means to subscribe to reductionism is to say that context contains no information, or rather, cannot function informationally. — StreetlightX
And again, to be against reductionism here is just to be for science, not against it; at least, it is to hew closer to the discoveries of science than any extra-scientific metaphysics which is foisted onto it from the outside. — StreetlightX
This obviously doesn't answer the symbol-grounding problem which you asked about, but it does imply thinking about 'symbols' differently: as not carriers of information in their own right, but as resources that need to be thought about in terms of wider, context-bearing processes. — StreetlightX
'Context' is exactly what you exclude in experimentation, all the better for experimental success. This is less a vice than a virtue however, and is one of the reasons science is so very powerful. In other words, reductionism works. The problem is when this necessary methodological reductionism is translated into, as it were, ontological premise. — StreetlightX
You can read the third chapter -- Two Cheers for Reductionism -- in Steven Weinberg's book Dreams of a Final Theory, for an instance of such an argument. — Pierre-Normand
That would appear to be the case. Thanks for the gene expression example. Mention of developmental factors brought gene switching to mind. — Galuchat
Isn't it more than just philosophical ontology? — T Clark
Isn't it more than just philosophical ontology?
— T Clark
As in? — StreetlightX
In fact, the oddest thing about such reductionist programs is that, taken to their logical conclusion, the ability to reconstruct the universe from first principles is idealism in it's most extreme form; they literally 'vacate the world of its content' as it were, giving up empiricism - the very loadstone of science - for ideality. Yet this almost entirely antiscientific POV is what is almost universally associated with so-called 'hard core science'. It's both bizarre and saddening.
The only definition of complexity with rigour that I know of is Robert Rosen's, which 'relativizes' complexity to our ability to model a particular system, — StreetlightX
A couple of weeks ago I started a discussion - "An attempt to clarify my thoughts about metaphysics." I wanted to lay out my thoughts about the difference between questions of fact and questions of what I called "metaphysics." One of the upshots of the discussion is that I think calling it metaphysics is probably not right. At least it's misleading. The questions I was interested in were those that are not matters of fact, but are more a matter of choice about how you want to look at things, e.g. is there such a thing as objective reality? is there an objective morality? Is there free will? I have always said that type of question does not have a yes or no answer. It's a matter of usefulness, not truth.
The discussion we are having now is making me rethink that. — T Clark
The point is not to reconstruct the universe, it is to see it as it really is. — Caldwell
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