Only to the interpretation of the body of these results as implying reductionism. — Pantagruel

Back in the day, Reductionism was an innovative method of analysis of Nature. Not only was it required to break-down complex systems into bite-size chunks our baby teeth could masticate, it was also a way to work around the authority of the church, which made outdated religious and philosophical dogma into big beliefs, to be swallowed whole. Unfortunately, we have ridden the horse of Reductionism about as far as it will carry us. That's why the cutting-edge of Science is venturing into holistic Systems Theory, and Complexity Theory, and even Quantum Indeterminism.

Science by its very nature is incomplete — Pantagruel

That's why Science must evolve or die out. Reductionism and Determinism are endangered species. But their fittest genes are still working in those newer forms of scientific investigation.

That's why Science must evolve or die out. Reductionism and Determinism are endangered species. But their fittest genes are still working in those newer forms of scientific investigation. — Gnomon

Yes, that is what Popper would call the positive products of a faulty metaphysical research program.

Reductionism/determinism proves that there is an information channel extending from less complex systems to the more complex systems in which the less complex systems are inter-related. Proves in other words that things like perception and mental-physical interaction take place. Think about it. A determinist argument essentially builds a causal link from the most basic non-mental elements up to the point where it has effects in the mental realm. Does this happen? Sure, it's a feature of mind. But should we therefore eliminate mind, just because it is intimately interconnected with the physical world? Not at all. That is one of its most intriguing features.

I have been debating about this issue ever since joining philosophy forums in 2010 or so. And I firmly believe the best method of analysis of it is historical and in terms of the history of ideas. It might sound like a very general phrase, but actually it's a specific sub-discipline which you will encounter in some schools of philosophy, comparative religion and cultural history.

In my analysis, reductionism and determinism are grounded in the discoveries and philosophies of the great pioneers of modern scientific method, specifically, Galileo, Newton, and Descartes. A major part of this was the model of the world as material objects obeying strictly physical laws, and an immaterial mind which was destined to being dismissed as being the 'ghost in the machine' (in Gilbert Ryle's phrase.) This is one of the consequences of the division between so-called 'primary' and 'secondary' qualities, with the primary qualities said to be intrinsic to objects (and hence, inherently real), and the latter being designated as 'in the mind of the observer' (which inevitably 'subjectivises' them). This construction has many far-reaching consequences on all of us and culture at large. It's no coincidence that it accompanied the birth of liberal individualism, whereby 'the individual' is felt to be an atomic unit of self-directed moral autonomy living within this 'construction'.

So in this context, mental states and freedom of the will, are not even real objects of analysis, as they're not objectively real. Behaviourism was really the only modern movement that fully acknowledged that, although it's arguable that elminative materialism is really its descendant. But the key point is, 'the modern outlook' *is* a mental construction, it is something that only exists because of consensus. It has no intrinsic reality (although it does have a lot of utility.)

Once you see through that and understand where it comes from, it makes it much easier to understand the controversies around it, although there's a lot of work involved in doing that.

Reductionism is not eliminativism. Saying that mind is reducible to matter isn't saying that mind doesn't exist, any more than saying that you can construct rational numbers out of equivalence classes of integers means that rational numbers don't exist. Reductionism just says that one thing is made entirely out of another thing, not that the former doesn't exist at all and only the latter does.

Most physicalist theories of mind say that the mind is supervenient on matter, i.e., matter is what is real, and the mind is dependent on it. They can still recognise that mind has emergent properties, and so on, but they will say that there is really only one substance in the philosophical sense, that being matter (or nowadays matter~energy) and that mind is ultimately reducible to that, even if it can’t be fully described in terms of known physics.

And I firmly believe the best method of analysis of it is historical and in terms of the history of ideas. It might sound like a very general phrase, but actually it's a specific sub-discipline which you will encounter in some schools of philosophy, comparative religion and cultural history. — Wayfarer

Yes, I have read 3 volumes of the works of Dilthey, who is one of the great historians of ideas. I think that the history of the idea of consciousness, in particular, is in a sense coeval with what we experience as consciousness. I've made that remark on the forum before.

I concur with your assessment of consensus. It's a central theme also.

Reductionism just says that one thing is made entirely out of another thing, not that the former doesn't exist at all and only the latter does. — Pfhorrest

Yes, I am in this particular case focusing on the eliminative/deterministic aspect because of the connection to will and freedom. But I feel the argument applies, mutatis mutandis, to reductionism at its most abstract or general level.

One thing being made out of another thing is the core of systems theory, which very much synthesizes the material elements of reductionism and the mental elements of rationalism or idealism (depending on whether your context is epistemological or ontological) through the approach of "biperspectivisim." Each is an aspect of a complex adaptive system, depending on whether the viewpoint assumed is external or internal. (I posted a while ago about a physics experiment in which results from these two different viewpoints were gathered and compared, such that time appeared to be flowing backwards.)

And reductionism usually does entail the marginalization of emergent properties, as far as I know. Setting aside "hybrid" types that try to reintegrate what the original approach has tried unsuccessfully to exclude (in the face of critical argument and evidence). I feel when schools of thought branch and evolve like this proponents have in a sense become apologists for the original theory.

Yes, I have read 3 volumes of the works of Dilthey, — Pantagruel

Kudos :pray: . That's an achievement in its own right.

Kudos :pray: . That's an achievement in its own right. — Wayfarer

Lol! Dilthey is pretty thick. Like a quagmire, but if you get enough underneath you, it is solid enough to stand on. I bought the three volume set about 8 years ago, and got through the first two volumes before I hit saturation point. I only read the third volume last fall.

German culture has 'Geisteswissenschaften', science of spirit, something sorely lacking in Anglo-American culture.

↪Pantagruel German culture has 'Geisteswissenschaften', science of spirit, something sorely lacking in Anglo-American culture. — Wayfarer

Absolutely. The science of sociology has evolved more or less self-consciously to fill this niche, which is what I'm focusing on now.

Since the winter I've covered Marx, Weber, Mead, Habermas. I have some more purely cultural works lined up (Dewey, Habermas' political stuff), then I'm going to move on to sociology of linguistics and symbols (Saussure, Cassirer). All in the context of the history of ideas of course. :)

The typical false argument for extreme reductionism is that then you are implying anti reductionism, the idea that advocates that not all properties of a system can be explained in terms of its constituent parts and their interactions. Hence there has to something like the "spirit". I think this is false: it actually doesn't have to go like this.

What you easily lose is the ability to answering questions, observing phenomena, that aren't present at all in the constituents parts. There being a causal relation and there being interesting question about phenomena and events don't go hand in hand.

An aircraft is made up of bolts and metal, but a metallurgist cannot say anything about the performance of the aircraft simply looking at the pieces of metal that the aircraft is made up. Question that can be answered about aerodynamics or aircraft engineering cannot be answered by looking at just the parts. But it doesn't apply that those parts wouldn't be what interact together and give the construction the ability to fly. There is just no way you can answer important questions about the whole (how well an aircraft flies) just by looking at the parts.

Hence in my view the problem with reductionism is that it makes false arguments on WHAT QUESTIONS can be answered from parts. Or otherwise quantum physicists could answer questions about cultural history.

In fact, social sciences is a perfect example by itself of how absolutely ridiculous is reductionism taken to it's extreme is. Because societies are made of human beings, why wouldn't all social sciences be answered by a smart biologist / psychologist / neuroscientist? Because group of people that makes up a society doesn't behave as a one human being and even differs from a few people put together.

Unfortunately this isn't understood and there is this idea at least at a unconscious level that reductionism is possible, if we just have better computers, better theories, better data. This thinking simply doesn't understand that there can surely be a causal relationship, but that doesn't mean that every question important to us can be answered going down the causal relationship to smaller parts. Above all, this doesn't mean that something physically is missing from the equation.

Unfortunately this isn't understood and there is this idea at least at a unconscious level that reductionism is possible, if we just have better computers, better theories, better data. This thinking simply doesn't understand that there to be a causal relationship doesn't mean that every question made can be answered going down the causal relationship to smaller parts. — ssu

I agree that for obvious practical reasons this kind of reductionism is not feasable, but why do you think that it would be impossible in principle? You don't really seem to give an argument for that, which is why I'm asking.

I agree that for obvious practical reasons this kind of reductionism is not feasable, but why do you think that it would be impossible in principle? — ChatteringMonkey

Because you lack the information needed to understand the question that needs more than the part.

I agree that for obvious practical reasons this kind of reductionism is not feasable, but why do you think that it would be impossible in principle?
— ChatteringMonkey
Because you lack the information needed to understand the question that needs more than the part. — ssu

That's not really an answer, I don't think, because it just shifts the question. Why do you lack information, if you know everything about the parts and their relation to eachother? Where does additional information come in then?

I'll try to give an example.

If the Third Reich used a cyanide-based pesticide to kill for them unwanted people in an efficient way, the "reductionist" correct view is that these specific humans died because breathing this pesticide. You can go all the way to molecular chemistry and biology to show just why this happens. But if someone asks "Why did these people die?", this answer relying on the chemistry and biology really doesn't cut it. Yes, it's correct, but no, it doesn't answer much anything.

Where does additional information come in then? — ChatteringMonkey

From the questions themselves. Questions define what kind of information we look for. We create these complex things in order to explain complex phenomena. We can see a causal relationship from some specific vantage point going, but the questions aren't anymore answerable.

Just think about economics. There's no such thing as "Gross Domestic Product" or an "Economic Depression" or a "Speculative Bubble" in the material World. But to view our society by using these kind of definitions makes us understand complex phenomena in our economy. And do they effect our behaviour, which by aggregate determines them? Sure. If I read that the GDP is going to fall of a cliff, I change my behaviour with my investment portfolio.

Or to think about in the sphere of natural sciences, when does a cloud that rains turn into a hurricane? Can you explain everything that happens in a hurricane from observing a tiny cloud in an area where hurricanes don't exist?

Okay, thank you for the explanation. I agree with it insofar those higher level questions relate to how we understand things. We wouldn't be able to understand those larger scale phenomenon described at the level of the atoms, not because those explanations are wrong or incomplete, but because we don't have the capacity to comprehend them at that level of detail.

You've nailed it. Far better said than I did.

I just don't know why this explanation isn't used.

And if the answer would be that "we have to be more holistic, take into consideration larger amount of interactions", then that wouldn't be reductionistic, would it?

And if the answer would be that "we have to be more holistic, take into consideration larger amount of interactions", then that wouldn't be reductionistic, would it? — ssu

No it wouldn't, it's the opposite it seems to me.

In fact that's actually what knowledge is I think, abstracting away from the world of particulars, to be able to make more general predictions.... or put in another way, we loose information at the level of detail, to gain knowledge on larger scales, i.e. to have a more holistic view.

You don't really say what you mean by reductionism, nor is it clear who the target of your vague criticism might be. Like materialism and scientism, reductionism is one of those labels that everyone likes to rail against, but the targets of such criticism are rarely clearly defined and identified.

Reductionism in science is the idea of unity of science: that different special sciences present different aspects of the same fundamental order of nature. If you believe that such an order is at least plausible, then you should not find the idea of reductionism objectionable.

Reductionism in science is the idea of unity of science: that different special sciences present different aspects of the same fundamental order of nature. If you believe that such an order is at least plausible, then you should not find the idea of reductionism objectionable. — SophistiCat

Isn't it a bit more than this? That the special sciences are in principle replaceable by a single fundamental science, usually physics. That means causation is bottom up, and there's no strong emergence of any entirely novel properties.

Yeah, reductivism has to be monistic, so it rules out substance dualist accounts of mind, vitalist accounts of life, etc. But in saying that chemistry reduces to physics, we don’t say chemicals don’t exist. Likewise in saying biological reduces to chemistry, we don’t say life doesn’t exist. And in saying psychology reduces to biology—the mind is just what the brain does—we don’t say that minds don’t exist, or aren’t important, or anything like that. Just that the complex upper levels are analyzable in terms of simpler lower levels, all the way down to the simplest of things.

Isn't it a bit more than this? That the special sciences are in principle replaceable by a single fundamental science, usually physics. That means causation is bottom up, and there's no strong emergence of any entirely novel properties. — Marchesk

Yes, what Marchesk said. :up:

The line between a reductionist approach and a non-reductionist approach is pretty clear, and I don't want to get bogged down in versioning. It struck me, as I said, that in meticulously constructing ever more elaborate bottom-up descriptions of how consciousness can be replaced by empirical-causal mechanisms, what reductionists have done - from the contrary perspective - is actually built a very solid framework for the causal interaction of mind and body.

Of course there will be some amount of bottom-up influence from matter to mind. That's the entire issue. But just because there is this "feedforward" capability doesn't mean it necessarily eliminates consciousness. Feeback from consciousness to the environment can also happen. Must happen, in fact, because for any action to take place there must be an equal and opposite reaction. So the environment can only 'influence' consciousness to the extent it is also influenced by consciousness (assuming there is some universal form of conservation law).

Just that the complex upper levels are analyzable in terms of simpler lower levels, all the way down to the simplest of things. — Pfhorrest

Right, versus the notion that the whole is actually more than the sum of its parts.

Isn't it a bit more than this? That the special sciences are in principle replaceable by a single fundamental science, usually physics. That means causation is bottom up, and there's no strong emergence of any entirely novel properties. — Marchesk

There isn't a generally accepted meaning of reductionism, but yes, there is a widely shared view that presents the program of scientific unification as a kind of pyramid with the most fundamental science - usually taken to be physics - at the bottom, underlying all other sciences. However, the exact nature of this underlying is a contested matter. It can be cached out as a loose supervenience, or as Nagelian bridge laws, or something in between.

The line between a reductionist approach and a non-reductionist approach is pretty clear, and I don't want to get bogged down in versioning. — Pantagruel

So clear that you still haven't managed to identify it. Reductionism isn't even an ontological thesis, and yet the actual target of your vague vituperations seems to be some cartoonish eliminativism.

...and their arrangements?

A 200lb pile of graphite and a 200lb solid diamond grandfather clock are both just 200lbs of carbon atoms, but the arrangement of those atoms makes all the difference. Saying that does not go against the reducibility of them both.

Pfhorrest
2.1k
↪Pantagruel ...and their arrangements?

A 200lb pile of graphite and a 200lb solid diamond grandfather clock are both just 200lbs of carbon atoms, but the arrangement of those atoms makes all the difference. Saying that does not go against the reducibility of them both. — Pfhorrest

Sorry Pfhorrest, I don't understand the point? I'm not saying that reductionism qua analysis is invalid. I'm saying that concluding that there is nothing "above" that level of analysis is unwarranted.

So clear that you still haven't managed to identify it. Reductionism isn't even an ontological thesis, and yet the actual target of your vague vituperations seems to be some cartoonish eliminativism. — SophistiCat

Observations? It's intended to be more of a synthesizing exercise, bringing some concepts and points of view together, in the context of my own understanding. Several people appear comfortable with the way reductionism is being characterized, it's neither complicated nor a far reach. The observation is that, ironically, the reductionist enterprise can be seen as constructing a framework for the very things that it denies (emergent properties).

edit. And although I don't like to resort to quicky definitions, your comment about reductionism not being ontological came off as pretty dismissive. From the Stanford EP:

"Reductionism encompasses a set of ontological, epistemological, and methodological claims about the relations between different scientific domains."

Certainly this has always been my own understanding of the concept.

Observations? It's intended to be more of a synthesizing exercise, bringing some concepts and points of view together, in the context of my own understanding. Several people appear comfortable with the way reductionism is being characterized, it's neither complicated nor a far reach. — Pantagruel

Yes, some people are comfortable with such breathy, substance-free rhetoric that amounts to little more than "Boo reductionism!" ("Boo materialism!" "Boo scientism!) There are any number of critical discussions to be had about reductionism (cf. the SEP article that you just googled), but unfortunately, this is not one of them.

to the simplest of things. — Pfhorrest

Which have never been found. So in effect it is ‘reduction to a mathematical abstraction’.