Yes, some people are comfortable with such breathy, substance-free rhetoric that amounts to little more than "Boo reductionism!" ("Boo materialism!" "Boo scientism!) — SophistiCat

I'm very pleased that you have lumped reductionism and materialism in there with scientism. Excellent observation. :up:

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. — ChatteringMonkey

Or basically that reductionist view simply doesn't give us any information. Let's think about for example historical events and how we explain them:

As history is focused on what happens with people, you could argue that you would get a better historical explanation if you somehow recorded and wrote down every action that every human being does at some time. Think about it as like a holistic-reductionist mix. Like "The history of 1939 - 1945 of every person, their every action and interaction between other humans during this time". And if that isn't detailed enough, then how about "the position and movement of every atom during the period of 1939 - 1945 in our solar system".

The fact is, that this finite (but very large) set of data simply wouldn't give us much if any useful data if we wouldn't use conventional history. The fact is, we would have to interpret the data. It wouldn't be useful as just raw data. Even on the level of one person that lived during 1939-1945, the thing is the life of a Malian farmer in Colonial French West Africa wouldn't be as informative to historians as let's say the life (every word he utters and every interaction) that the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had 1939-1945. The question we pose define what is important, so I guess for a sociologist studying colonial Mali naturally the farmer would be more important than Stalin, but he or she has a different set of questions from the usual. Some events simply just tell us more than others. And why something is more important than other things is exactly because of our social constructs in our mind like nations etc. that simply aren't reduced to atom level interaction.

And why something is more important than other things is exactly because of our social constructs in our mind like nations etc. that simply aren't reduced to atom level interaction. — ssu

I like Popper's three world approach. He describes concepts (social constructs) as constituting their own unique realm (world 3) and quite successfully describes inter-world interactions, I think.

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. — Wayfarer

That's not supervenience

Yes. We absolutely need that realm what Popper is talking about to make sense of the World that we have created ourselves (and created for ourselves).

Reductionist scientism isn't going to answer questions about it. The only consequence is that journalists trying to ponder about the "deep roots" and "real underlying issues" will ask a quantum physicist or a cosmologist about issues totally outside their realm of study. Not very helpful.

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). — Pantagruel

I'm just now really looking outside of philosophy toward sociology for instance because I've grasped the theme of 'spirit' running through philosophy (as in connecting Wittgenstein to Hegel.) 'Spirit' is cultural software (or soft-where?) What kind of being does language have? How does 'the social' exist? It's historical. So what is history? A sequence of events or (more importantly) something alive in us now? In the very language we use (or are) to ask such a question? And how is our own investigation of this history dominated by that same history? We are cat chasing our own tail, and becoming aware of that is part of the chase.

Some philosophers are afraid of 'spirit' as too squishy. They wan't to construct an atemporal method for critical thinking, and they fend off insights that suggest the impossibility of such a project .
Others are keen on addressing spirit but angsty about how historical it seems to be. For them the method is a forgotten treasure, not a work still and perhaps endlessly in progress (both spirit and the talk of spirit, which is part of spirit.)

Also, Saussure is awesome. Culler's little book on him is great.

Some philosophers are afraid of 'spirit' as too squishy. They wan't to construct an atemporal method for critical thinking, and they fend off insights that suggest the impossibility of such a project .
Others are keen on addressing spirit but angsty about how historical it seems to be. For them the method is a forgotten treasure, not a work still and perhaps endlessly in progress (both spirit and the talk of spirit, which is part of spirit.) — path

Yes, I agree, it is almost as if a big part of the battle is internal. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was the 'little ego' trying to stave off the larger self.....

Also, Saussure is awesome. Culler's little book on him is great. — path

Thanks very much for the recommendation! I was hoping to find a good introduction before tackling the Course and I was able to find a PDF.

the fatal mistake in reductionism is not the reductive process, but thinking that the resulting model necessarily correlates with reality. My favorite example is Philip Jose Farmer's theory that this solar system is actually a copy of the original one inside an energy-emitting sphere outside the orbit of pluto, which recreates the appearance of starfields indistinguishably from the original. His point was, God could have created dinosaur bones as a joke during a 7-day creation, but that was so unpopular at the time he could not even say it.

Some people find the notion upsetting, but the fact is, science only attempts to provide a predictive model. As long as the model's predictions are useful in explaining observed events, it doesn't actually matter how accurately the model represents reality. The components of the model may be simplifications, such as in Newtonian physics, which doesn't claim any particular 'center.' It is a mathematical simplification to consider the earth going around the sun. Nothing really 'orbits' anything except in our own perception. That is the model's terminology to explain what we observe in reductionist terms. It doesn't mean there needs to be an evolutionary process, just as there doesnt really need to be an 'orbit,' except in how we observe events predicted by those concepts.

Much of the time, the correlations are observable and straightforward enough in normal human discourse, but too frequently it takes a wild dip into the insane, such as astronomers deciding pluto is not a planet, as if there really has to be such a thing as a 'planet' that astronomers have led themselves to believe they can define better than anyone else in the first place.

The Pluto planethood debate is an excellent example of the biggest fallacy in reductionism, that a simpler model necessarily describes reality.

Yes, I agree, it is almost as if a big part of the battle is internal. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was the 'little ego' trying to stave off the larger self..... — Pantagruel

I'd just about swear the same thing. That 'little ego' is like the kernel of various ideologies that are superficially opposed. I went from Derrida to Saussure, and so much that I like in Derrida was already there in Saussure, albeit more ambivalently. The system of differences without positive elements is pretty mind-blowing, and it helped me see Wittgenstein in a new way. I hope you like Culler's book as much as I did, and it's great you found a pdf.

The fundamental error of reductionism is to believe that that 'small things' (e.g. atoms) always and totally determine big things (e.g. human beings), in a one-way street. But since "to all action a reaction", it stands to reason that, IF the small can have an effect on the big, then the big can have an effect on the small...

, such as astronomers deciding pluto is not a planet — ernestm

Yes, that is a pet peeve of mine also. "Planet" is a descriptive category, but it is also an historical one. Scientists can be somewhat...overzealous in their pursuit of categorization, sometimes in changing it and sometimes in defending it.

The fundamental error of reductionism is to believe that that 'small things' (e.g. atoms) always and totally determine big things (e.g. human beings), in a one-way street. But since "to all action a reaction", it stands to reason that, IF the small can have an effect on the big, then the big can have an effect on the small...
an hour ago — Olivier5

Yes, this is becoming pretty much universally appreciated I think. The law of conservation seems to be the one universal constant, and it is uncomplicated: for A to affect B, B must equally affect A. You can't push against nothing.

I went from Derrida to Saussure, and so much that I like in Derrida was already there in Saussure, albeit more ambivalently. The system of differences without positive elements is pretty mind-blowing, and it helped me see Wittgenstein in a new way — path

Very interesting. I read Derrida and Wittgenstein 25 years ago, and did not like either. I think I lacked sufficient context to really understand them. I believe I'll revisit both when I get through all my new purchases.

"You can't push against nothing."
Exactly. The same law of action-reaction applies to the mind-body problem. The body has an evident impact on the mind. Thus it follows that the mind must have some impact on the body, like when I ask you to raise your arm and you do it: that's symbolic language having a material impact. So the idea that mind is an epiphenomenon contradicts the laws of physics.

I think the whole "non-issue" started with the rapid advent and hegemony of science qua mechanism. I think the concepts of "mechanism" and "progress" became improperly intertwined, resulting in a lot of misdirected effort.

I think Saussure's idea of negative differences between concepts and their absence of clear-cut ontological value is fundamental to understand natural languages. Concepts are relational, the meaning is at the level of the network between concepts more so than inside each concept taken in isolation.

It's what I call naive materialism. The belief in the primacy of "matter" (whatever that means) over anything else. But as we have known since what? Aristotle?, matter always comes in some form. There's no such thing as formless matter. Even pure chaos is a sort of form. And one cannot really conceive of a 'pure' form not encased in some material support (though Plato tried). Therefore matter and information are joined at the conceptual hip: you can't have one without the other.

In a less naive form of materialism, Descartes dualism should be reformed into the fundamental duality or ying-yang relationship between matter and information (understood as the infinite shapes and forms that matter can take and 'support'), two sides of the same coin.

I think Saussure's idea of negative differences between concepts and their absence of clear-cut ontological value is fundamental to understand natural languages. Concepts are relational, the meaning is at the level of the network between concepts more so than inside each concept taken in isolation. — Olivier5

Is this related to the hermenuetic circle?

In a less naive form of materialism, Descartes dualism should be reformed into the fundamental duality or ying-yang relationship between matter and information (understood as the infinite shapes and forms that matter can take and 'support'), two sides of the same coin. — Olivier5

Sounds like a reasonable direction to me....

More to system thinking and structuralism.

More to system thinking and structuralism. — Olivier5

I'm very much a proponent and advocate of systems philosophy. Have you read Laszlo?

Have you read Laszlo? — Pantagruel

Nope. Checked his Wikipedia entry and I'm interested. I like this idea of "a field of information as the substance of the cosmos", the "Akashic field". That's very close to my thinking.

I remain fundamentally a realist as well as a lazy person so I might not buy into all the psychedelics, but I like the idea of a quantum mind as well. This is something I have been playing with, because I found that the quantum wave-particle duality looks strangely similar to my concept of mind-body duality* and to its underlying idea of a matter-information duality as being the stuff this universe is made of (which itself resemble the "Akashic field"?).


* aka mind-brain duality, however the brain is but a part of our nervous system so I prefer "mind-body" - the term "mind-nervous system duality" would be the most precise but it's too long.

Wiki:
Structuralism in Europe developed in the early 1900s, mainly in France and Russian Empire, in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague, Moscow and Copenhagen schools of linguistics. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when structural linguistics were facing serious challenges from thinkers and philosophers such as Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance, an array of scholars in the humanities borrowed Saussure's concepts for use in their respective fields of study. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was arguably the first such scholar, sparking a widespread interest in structuralism.

Laszlo's reconciliation of the mind-body problem is compelling. It is in his Introduction to Systems Philosophy.

So the idea that mind is an epiphenomenon contradicts the laws of physics. — Olivier5

Again, epiphenomenalism is not the same as reductionism. You can maintain that A is in some sense reducible to B without denying the reality and causal efficacy of A.

Epiphenomenalism has always puzzled me by its outsize place in the philosophy of mind. Seen in a larger context, one could use the same causal exclusion premise to construct any number of parallel arguments to the effect that special sciences are causally inert. For example, chemistry must be causally inert if it doesn't play any causal roles over and above underlying physics. So it would seem that epiphenomenalism with respect to the mental is a minor special case of a much larger question of intertheory relations.

The fundamental error of reductionism is to believe that that 'small things' (e.g. atoms) always and totally determine big things (e.g. human beings), in a one-way street. But since "to all action a reaction", it stands to reason that, IF the small can have an effect on the big, then the big can have an effect on the small... — Olivier5

Completely wrong. The weakest possible reductive relationship is that of supervenience: "No A changes without B changes." So if A is reducible to B, then anything that happens at the A level must have an effect at the B level.

Taking an extreme, we cannot currently treat a macroscopic phenomenon like the mind quantum mechanically. This is not because QM does not contain the essential feature necessary for yielding mental states; this is because the brain consists of billions of elementary particles and that's simply too many for any person or computer to handle. This would have been true of the boron atom fifty years ago, which I can now model on my laptop without too much hassle. Maybe one day my great great great great great grandchildren will be able to observe mental states in a computational model of the brain. But probably not since I have no children.

Unless we have a technological innovation to support handling stupendously large numbers of degrees of freedom, it is insane to treat a large complex system using more exact, elementary theory. The cutoff limit is a technological characteristic only. It is not in any way evidence that any non-elementary field of study is not reducible to a more fundamental theory. There is nothing wrong with a purely theoretical description of the entire Universe in principle. There's something truly wrong with anyone who'd try it in practise.

The other obvious point to make is that just because one set of laws is seen to emerge from a more fundamental set of laws (such as chemical and classical mechanical laws from QM) it doesn't mean that, on day 1, proponents of the latter can explain everything that the former can. There's a lot of ab rectum arguments that start: "But science cannot explain..." which belie a more anti-scientific than anti-reductionist stance. It is not science's job to provide answers to all questions -- it is not a religion. It's often science's job to say "I don't know, let's find out" -- it is a method of enquiry and verification.

The argument that e.g. physical chemistry is incapable of describing mental states on the basis that, still in its infancy, it has failed to describe mental states is a failure to note the trajectory of scientific accomplishment. It is not a "proof" that mental states cannot be yielded from more elementary theory. Perhaps the most interesting part of moving to a more fundamental theory is seeing precisely how complex phenomena emerge, if technology allows. It is certainly not desirable to "eliminate our most interesting phenomena"; we are simply limited in what we can achieve at any given time. Again, it's a method, not a religion.

Last point: science is reductionism-friendly, not reductionism-driven. When someone discovers a more fundamental theory, we examine it. We keep our minds open to the possibility that the electron has internal structure, while proceeding on the assumption that it does not, at least until that assumption can be shown to fail. It is nature that has shown herself partial to reductionism, giving us one phenomena (electromagnetism) that looks to us like two (electricity and magnetism), then three (electricity, magnetism, and the weak nuclear force). We have had to change our theories to suit her. The idea that science is reductionist endeavour because of its human constituents rather than because of the nature it represents paints us as far more motivated than we really are. We get points for testability, not originality.

I maybe barking up the wrong tree here but reductionism appears to be about explanations and insofar as explanations are the issue, the modus operandi we employ, to my understanding, involves "reducing" what needs explaining into its component parts. The way I see it, there's no other methodology available to us. Basically, reductionism is an inevitable consequence of the way we've defined the word "explanation".

Ergo, to criticize of reductionism is to have an issue with what explanations are, how the word "explanation" is defined. It's like approving a cake recipe but disapproving the cake itself. To cut to the chase, we need a different definition of "explanation". Just think of it, suppose the mind is not reducible to physics and chemistry and we get our hands on a different explanation but, this explantion too must be ultimately reductionist - the mind being understood in terms of something simpler.

You can maintain that A is in some sense reducible to B without denying the reality and causal efficacy of A. — SophistiCat

If A has causal efficacy, why can’t something from level A affect something from level B?