lol So, Kurt Godel who was one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century didn't know propositional calculus existed? — h060tu

Godel proved that first order logic was consistent and complete, you dummy. This discussion has nothing to do with Godel's theorems.

So my point remains that there is nothing special about biology in this regard. The inter-theoretic reduction program is difficult and contentious at just about every level. — SophistiCat

I went through an Intertheoretic Reductionism phase, and it is tortuous stuff. I recently came upon Popper's writings. He maintains that this type of science, even though it cannot reach the answers it seeks, nevertheless is excellent for leading us down different paths, and opening doors to new areas of research (leading to new metaphysical research programmes) .

There is a bewildering variety of notions concerning reduction and emergence in the philosophical literature, but I think that the sort of hand-wavy weak emergence that you outline is not very controversial. However, anything stronger or more rigorous than that - such as ontological reduction that the OP brings up - is rife with problems, starting with just setting out the precise meanings of these terms. — SophistiCat

I'm not sure if I'm just unfamiliar with this area of ontology somehow or if it just seems so transparently confused to me, but either way I don't really see what problem is remaining. If we can study how (ordinary multicellular) living things work, what makes them alive or not, in terms of the operations of their bodies made of tissues made of living cells, and we can study how those cells work in terms of non-living molecules, and we can study how those molecules work in terms of ordinary particle physics... then what questions are really left? Clearly then life is reducible to physics in that way, so what is still unanswered?

That isn't to say that biology and chemistry are useless fields and we should just be doing physics, just that the things the fields study relate to each other in a hierarchical way, each being an abstraction of aggregates of the objects of another field. Even within physics this is already done: temperature is an abstraction of aggregates of mechanical motion. It's often useful to consider those higher levels of abstraction; nobody (that I know of) is suggesting we should study biology as some kind of gigantic yotta-particle interaction. Those nanoscopic details don't matter at that level, and it makes perfect sense to sweep them under the rug. But that doesn't mean that anything magical happens when particles end up arranged into the shape of a cell: the cell's life is just something the lifeless particles are doing.

May I ask, what's your view of mathematics? Do you think it has adequate descriptive power? When you talk about the possibility of interlevel relations in science, I can only imagine such a translation in mathematical terms. Otherwise you're churning two gears together without lubricant. Oh, the horror!

I don’t really follow the question, but if this helps answer it: I think mathematics necessarily has enough descriptive power, because we invent whatever mathematics we need to describe things. To say that mathematics cannot have enough descriptive power is just to say that some things are not describable, and I literally cannot imagine what an indescribable thing would be like — if I could imagine it, I could also describe it, and if I took the effort to describe it rigorously enough, that would be a mathematical description.

Godel proved that first order logic was consistent and complete, you dummy. This discussion has nothing to do with Godel's theorems. — SophistiCat

It's called the Incompleteness theorem.

Anyway, no point talking to people who don't understand what they're talking about.

Y

You are the jerk, foghorn.

Maybe so, but at least I have a better mind than ignorant morons like you whose philosophical insights and intelligent conversations are a victim of intellectual constipation, awaiting a suitable laxative.

I think you're taking your inevitable demise too harshly and projecting it on other people. You think it justifies you somehow, but really you're just a joke.

I pity you. But it's too late for you; you made sure of that. You do have worth, however, and life will teach you that.

You may as well try to learn now. I mean, there's little sense in being deliberately stupid. But I doubt you will. I think you're just an ornery little puke.

I'm not sure if I'm just unfamiliar with this area of ontology somehow or if it just seems so transparently confused to me, but either way I don't really see what problem is remaining. If we can study how (ordinary multicellular) living things work, what makes them alive or not, in terms of the operations of their bodies made of tissues made of living cells, and we can study how those cells work in terms of non-living molecules, and we can study how those molecules work in terms of ordinary particle physics... then what questions are really left? Clearly then life is reducible to physics in that way, so what is still unanswered? — Pfhorrest

If you only say that different levels or scales loosely supervene on or ground or compose each other, and aren't too particular about what that means and how that comes about, then you won't get much argument from anyone. The devil, as always, is in the details. There is extensive literature on reduction, emergence and supervenience. The more traditional take on these issues was skewed towards the philosophy of mind, but in parallel with that a more general discussion of inter-theory relations has emerged (), which I personally find more interesting. The SEP article Scientific Reduction gives some idea of the problematics.

The term "Idealism" came into vogue roughly during the time of Kant (though it was used earlier by others, such as Leibniz) to label one of two trends that had emerged in reaction to Cartesian philosophy. Descartes had argued that there were two basic yet separate substances in the universe: Extension (the material world of things in space) and Thought (the world of mind and ideas). Subsequently opposing camps took one or the other substance as their metaphysical foundation, treating it as the primary substance while reducing the remaining substance to derivative status. Materialists argued that only matter was ultimately real, so that thought and consciousness derived from physical entities (chemistry, brain states, etc.). Idealists countered that the mind and its ideas were ultimately real, and that the physical world derived from mind (e.g., the mind of God, Berkeley's esse est percipi, or from ideal prototypes, etc.).

Materialists gravitated toward mechanical, physical explanations for why and how things existed, while Idealists tended to look for purposes - moral as well as rational - to explain existence. Idealism meant "idea-ism," frequently in the sense Plato's notion of "ideas" (eidos) was understood at the time, namely ideal types that transcended the physical, sensory world and provided the form (eidos) that gave matter meaning and purpose. As materialism, buttressed by advances in materialistic science, gained wider acceptance, those inclined toward spiritual and theological aims turned increasingly toward idealism as a countermeasure. Before long there were many types of materialism and idealism.

Idealism, in its broadest sense, came to encompass everything that was not materialism, which included so many different types of positions that the term lost any hope of univocality. Most forms of theistic and theological thought were, by this definition, types of idealism, even if they accepted matter as real, since they also asserted something as more real than matter, either as the creator of matter (in monotheism) or as the reality behind matter (in pantheism). Extreme empiricists who only accepted their own experience and sensations as real were also idealists. Thus the term "idealism" united monotheists, pantheists and atheists. At one extreme were various forms of metaphysical idealism which posited a mind (or minds) as the only ultimate reality. The physical world was either an unreal illusion or not as real as the mind that created it. To avoid solipsism (which is a subjectivized version of metaphysical idealism) metaphysical idealists posited an overarching mind that envisions and creates the universe.

A more limited type of idealism is epistemological idealism, which argues that since knowledge of the world only exists in the mental realm, we cannot know actual physical objects as they truly are, but only as they appear in our mental representations of them. Epistemological idealists could be ontological materialists, accepting that matter exists substantially; they could even accept that mental states derived at least in part from material processes. What they denied was that matter could be known in itself directly, without the mediation of mental representations. Though unknowable in itself, matter's existence and properties could be known through inference based on certain consistencies in the way material things are represented in perception.

Transcendental idealism contends that not only matter but also the self remains transcendental in an act of cognition. Kant and Husserl, who were both transcendental idealists, defined "transcendental" as "that which constitutes experience but is not itself given in experience." A mundane example would be the eye, which is the condition for seeing even though the eye does not see itself. By applying vision and drawing inferences from it, one can come to know the role eyes play in seeing, even though one never sees one's own eyes. Similarly, things in themselves and the transcendental self could be known if the proper methods were applied for uncovering the conditions that constitute experience, even though such conditions do not themselves appear in experience. Even here, where epistemological issues are at the forefront, it is actually ontological concerns, viz. the ontological status of self and objects, that is really at stake. Western philosophy rarely escapes that ontological tilt. Those who accepted that both the self and its objects were unknowable except through reason, and that such reason(s) was their cause and purpose for existing - thus epistemologically and ontologically grounding everything in the mind and its ideas - were labeled Absolute Idealists (e.g., Schelling, Hegel, Bradley [and arguably Pierce]), since only such ideas are absolute while all else is relative to them. — Dan Lusthaus (Buddhist scholar)

I myself tend towards transcendental/epistemological idealism. The empirical/phenomenal/sensory domain is real but not (in Buddhist terms) ‘self-existent’, i.e. it doesn’t possess an inherent or mind-independent reality. It is the basic assumption of naturalism that the sensory domain is in some sense self-explanatory, or will be in the fullness of time, when all the research has been done. But like many religious philosophies, I view the empirical domain as being lacking or absent its own ground, cause or foundation. Discovering what that means is the curriculum of philosophy, in my book.

IMHO a "theory of everything" is sophomoric, and shows a lack of understanding of understanding itself. I compare it to the ancient belief that there was a particular music tone that would destroy the universe.