You must know the paradox called the ship of Theseus. What's your solution for it? — Olivier5

What does this have to do with anything? Are you trying to foist another silly strawman on reductionism, or are you just throwing random shit against the wall and hoping that something sticks?

Just trying to be friendly. :grin:

The ship of Theseus is a good example of why the structural level is important. And by definition you cannot explain a structure by breaking it into pieces. You have to pay attention to how the shape of the structure as a whole arranges, channels and combines the interactions between the pieces into a succesful, functioning outcome, eg a floating boat or a living body.

If only anyone had thought of the implications of multiple realizability for reduction...

multiple realizability for reduction — SophistiCat

Meaning?

@Pantagruel
My go-to example for this sort of thing is the theory of evolution. It is one of the most powerful and influential scientific theories that we have ("Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" - Theodosius Dobzhansky), and it is not reductionist, it is a systems theory.

Since Darwin developed his theory, we have learned a lot about the chemistry of life in general, and the mechanism of biological inheritance in particular. This has increased our understanding of evolution; for one thing, things that once had to be taken for granted (such as inheritance itself) now have a causal explanation.

This does not mean that the theory of evolution is redundant. On the contrary, a reductionist explanation, of how the current distribution of species on Earth came to be, is conceivable (though very much in principle), in the form of a vast catalog of every mutation along every line of descent of every organism alive today. Even if we had such a catalog, however, we would still, as Dobzhansky says, need a theory of evolution to make sense of it - the purely reductionist view is not wrong, it is just not useful on its own.

These days, there is little support for the notion that there is something about evolution that does not have a physical cause, along the lines described above, and the reason why reductionism is an issue in the philosophy of mind is because we wonder if the same could be said of the mind.

The origin of life is much more speculative than its evolution, but these days, the two camps on that matter simply ignore one another, for the most part. In many ways, the human mind has become the last refuge of vitalism, and science has not yet developed to the point where it can dislodge it.

My go-to example for this sort of thing is the theory of evolution. It is one of the most powerful and influential scientific theories that we have ("Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" - Theodosius Dobzhansky), and it is not reductionist, it is a systems theory. — A Raybould

Excellent example! I totally subscribe to the idea that one can understand an element only by looking at how this element fits in the big picture. E.g. the idea that "selfish genes" drive evolution is simply wrong. Genes are just the ink and paper on which the story is written down. They are not the story. The story is about organisms and species.

Life in general is systemic. It is information bossing matter around, as much or more than vice versa.

Life in general is systemic. It is information bossing matter around, as much or more than vice versa. — Olivier5

I think the essence of systems thinking is that things do not boss each other around so much as they exhibit robust patterns of interconnectedness in a process of ongoing complexification...

Okay, maybe my formulation is a bit simplistic, but to my defense I nuanced it with "as much or more than vice versa".