Using your way to describe autonomy, is it then still possible to also reduce the same explained phenomena into lower level structures? — Frederick KOH

No, it is not possible. That's because it is proven that the high level features shared by systems that belong to the relevant equivalence class fully explain the existence of the high level laws (since the latter can be causally/deductively derived from the former), on the one hand, and since those higher-level laws are completely insensitive to any other low level features of material constitution that aren't merely deducible from the system's belonging to the relevant equivalence class. Hence, the availability of any bottom-up (and hence reductive) explanation is positively ruled out.

Before reduction is attempted, is there a way to tell if the theory was autonomous? — Frederick KOH

Yes, there is. I just explained it in a long message moments ago. (Well, just two short paragraphs, actually). The autonomy of the theory is demonstrated through deriving it directly from high level structural features (and normal boundary conditions, etc.) of the systems belonging to an equivalence class that abstracts away from most determinate (thought irrelevant to the derivation of the high level laws) features of material constitution. In that case, to attempt a reduction of the high level laws just is pointless. It's akin to seeking your keys under the lamp post, just because there is more light there, and in spite of the fact that you know for a fact that you've lost your keys further down the street in the shadows!

A theory that explains sets of phenomena in their own terms, without analysing them into their constituent entities such as gluons, quarks or superstrings, is a theory at the appropriate level of emergence whose fundamental objects are autonomous. — tom

Indeed, explanatory autonomy is the key. As I mentioned earlier, the relevant concept of (at least partial) autonomy is neatly explained in Karen Crowther's Decoupling emergence and reduction in physics while discussing "towers of theories" in the framework of effective field theories -- exactly the scientific context where Weinberg would most strongly expect to find "arrows of explanation" that all point towards the levels of higher energy scales in the direction of his uniquely fundamental "final theory"!

It's borderline and inconclusive irrespective of the people involved. — Frederick KOH

They produced insightful philosophical works and made genuine scientific discoveries irrespective of your stubborn denials.

Suppose we have an empirically adequate theory at a certain level. Does an "emergentist" have any theory to determine whether that theory is autonomous or admits further reduction? — Frederick KOH

That some of the features of the theory that are explanatory fruitful do not admit of further reduction isn't a claim of ignorance. It is a positive claim that can be demonstrated conclusively and without appeal to any sort of magic. What is shown is that this explanatory relevant feature of the system is common to several other systems with heterogeneous material constitutions owing simply to them belonging to an equivalence class: sharing formal/functional features that directly ground those laws. (This is what is being referred to as multiple realizability). That is, it is only from those high level formal/functional features (and also, in many cases, some contingent features of the history of the system and of its normal boundary conditions) that the high/level laws, norms, principles or regularities can be derived and explained.

George Ellis, in his recent books and many articles, provides countless examples of emergent laws in physics, biology, computer science and cognitive science. There also exist an abundant literature pertaining to emergence and top-down causation in chemistry. One paper that I read recently (authored by a professor of chemistry) provides an example of a class of chemical networks where the concentration of a reactant is fixed insensitively to the concentrations of the other reactants in the network provided only that the individual reactions satisfy a specific structural/topological relationship. And that it must be so derives from a mathematical theorem (recently proven) regarding the structure of such networks. I'll dig up the reference if you want.

But at that level you either do borderline science or inconclusive philosophy. — Frederick KOH

Just because a philosopher has a good scientific understanding doesn't necessarily makes her produce "inconclusive philosophy". Also, just because a scientist is well acquainted with philosophy doesn't make her produce "borderline science". Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hillary Putnam, Susan Hurley, Werner Heisenberg, James Jerome Gibson, Ernst Mayr and George Ellis are cases in point.

Either there is such a naturalism and people opposed to naturalism in general are all incapable of reasoning or there is none. I am inclined to conclude the former. — Frederick KOH

Just because the option of a non-reductive naturalism isn't a live option in the minds of several intellectuals (scientists and philosophers alike) doesn't mean that they are incapable of reasoning. It may merely means that the general ignorance of such a position is rooted in widespread prejudice. Correct philosophical accounts aren't all popular philosophical accounts.

In the case of Weinberg, he faces what I consider an insurmountable disadvantage. Even when he engages philosophers, he engages as a scientist. He makes claims that have no hope of being philosophically defended because they are empirical claims but of a different order. They are not properly scientific either because these are claims at a higher level of generality than a scientific theory. — Frederick KOH

I guess I can agree with you that Weinberg's arguments aren't any better when construed as scientific arguments than they are when construed as philosophical arguments. His lack of so much as a cursory acquaintance with the relevant literature on reduction and emergence, either in physics, specifically, or in science, generally (e.g. in chemistry, biology, social sciences and cognitive sciences) also puts him at a severe disadvantage compared with his numerous colleagues who both are well acquainted with this literature, and who also (some of them) actively contribute to it.

Accepting a position does not mean you are indifferent to its flaws. Similar flaws exist in other positions. — Frederick KOH

I am not faulting you for failing to abandon the position that you had taken the burden to defend (and that you had straddled me with the burden of criticizing the specific arguments Weinberg muster in favor of it). I am rather faulting you with failing to even acknowledge (let alone seriously address) my criticisms of Weinberg's positive arguments on the ridiculous ground that any flaws a philosophical position might present aren't necessary fatal to it and hence dont really undermine it.

There isn't one. — Frederick KOH

This is a mere dogmatic denial. There are many such forms of naturalism on offer (both in the philosophical literature and within ordinary scientific practice). It is your burden to show that they entail some sort of unacknowledged belief in magic, or to show that all forms of genuine scientific explanation that don't involve magic (and that aren't either reliant on mysterious emergent laws that defy all explanation) must be reductionistic in Weinberg's sense. I have showed you why Weinberg's demonstration that all "Why?" explanations must either be reductive or magical is flawed, since he overlooks many forms of successful explanation of scientific laws or principles (or natural regularities, biological norms, etc.) that are commonly made use of in ordinary scientific practice and that are neither reductionistic nor magical. They just don't happen to all point neatly in the direction of the unique point of convergence where Weinberg locates his dreamed of "final theory".

No. Please give me exact quote. — Frederick KOH

You asked rhetorically: "How does one reject reductionism without making naturalism as vulnerable." and you seem to value highly the defense of naturalism. Since you mostly argue through asking non-committal rhetorical questions, it's very hard to reconstruct what it is that you might believe of be arguing for, positively. If you feel that your views are being misconstrued, it would be better for you to be more explicit rather than challenge *me* to justify my paraphrases of them, and invite even more misunderstanding without committing to anything.

This does not erase the flaws of naturalism. — Frederick KOH

Well, how else do you "erase" the alleged flaws of a position that you endorse other than through showing that the arguments mustered by your critics against it are themselves flawed or point missing?

When you deny the "super" of something, how do you avoid talking about the something first? — Frederick KOH

If this were a thread about naturalism, then I might take that burden. But I need no produce a detailed account of the naturalism that I would feel comfortable arguing for in order to point out that Weinberg's assimilation of anti-reductionism to a belief in magic, or in supernatural phenomena, is unwarranted. It suffices for me to sketch an account of the forms of non-reductive scientific explanations -- explanations that are commonly generated in ordinary scientific practice, including in physics -- the structure of which Weinberg completely overlooks, in order to show that his fear is unwarranted.

The arguments against naturalism are respectable philosophical arguments. If we accept naturalism anyway, does it mean that it matters not at all that arguments against it are afflicted by little or large flaws? — Frederick KOH

No. Quite the contrary. If we endorse naturalism then we thereby straddle ourselves with the burden of showing that anti-naturalism arguments are flawed. Either that, or we must show that the specific form of naturalism that we endorse doesn't share in the flaws of the different sort of naturalism that the anti-naturalism arguments target. The essays in the Naturalism in Question book that I references earlier make clear that there are various doctrines that fall under the name "naturalism", some of which are viewed as reasonable (e.g. McDowell's "relaxed" naturalism) and some of which are viewed as questionable (e.g. various forms of reductionism or scientism), by the very same philosophers.

In a way, you argued with yourself. You were challenged on you naturalism and you position shifted noticeably. I even juxtaposed/quoted the change some of my comments. — Frederick KOH

Since you assumed naturalism to be roughly equivalent to reductionism, you misconstrued what my acknowledgement of naturalism (which I defined as the mere denial of super-naturalism, or of mysterious emergent laws that defy all explanation) entailed. You position shifted rather more dramatically from an acknowledgement of the burden to defend Weinberg's pro-reductionism arguments against my criticism to a claim of indifference towards the flaws, small or large, that they may present.

"They" referred to naturalism and reductionism. How did my "they" turn into your "my"? — Frederick KOH

Sorry, I misunderstood. But your argumentative strategy is so bizarre and out of this world that you are easily misunderstood. You are now arguing, again, that it matters not at all if Weinberg's arguments in favor of reductionism are afflicted by little or large flaws. (And this after straddling me with the burden of criticizing his allegedly very strong arguments). You are now arguing that the flaws in his pro-reductionism arguments must be ignored since, if they were acknowleged, then similar (albeit unspecified) flaws in pro-naturalism arguments could make some naturalists worried. Meanwhile, you are declining to indicate how the sort of pluralism that I (together with several distinguished scientists and philosophers of science) recommend might constitute any threat at all to a defensible naturalism that wouldn't share the flaws that afflict reductionism.

As I keep saying, they have the same flaws, subtle or not. — Frederick KOH

You haven't stated what the flaws in my arguments were. You haven't offered any specific counter-argument. You merely complained that if they weren't assumed to be flawed in some way or other then some dogmatic "naturalists" might sh*t their pants.

They don't have to be aligned and I am not saying they are. I am saying analogous arguments can be made against naturalism. — Frederick KOH

It is not a sound criticism of a sound argument that merely "similar" arguments can be made to support a false position. If this is the case, then you had better attend to the difference, rather than the similarity, in order to properly diagnose the subtle flaw in the second argument.

If you say a similar argument can be made against naturalism, I am happy to concede. — Frederick KOH

I have been explicitly arguing that naturalism and reductionism are not aligned positions. I've criticized Weinberg's tacit assimilation of them. I endorse a form of the former and reject most forms of the latter. (I endorse only Ernst Mayr's scientific "analysis", a rather weak form of methodological/heuristic "reductionism"). Naturalism and irreducible-pluralism live happily together. Almost all of the emergentist/anti-reductionist scientists and philosophers who I learn from are naturalists. (They may be called 'relaxed' naturalists: a position that harmonises with Putnam's 'realism with a human face'). For a depiction of this sort of naturalism, see the various essays in Mario De Caro, David Macarthur eds, Naturalism in Question, HUP 2008. (I recommend especially the essays by Davidson, Dupré, Hornsby, McDowell and Putnam.)

Laughing at solipsism does no imply one is doesn't care one bit about arguments. — Frederick KOH

Laugh and ironise all you want; it is your own refusal to engage in arguments that may lead one to conclude that you don't care about them. Although Weinberg's pro-redutionism arguments seem to me to be defective, I can not fault him with merely substituting laughter for them. He clearly acknowledges the need to be arguing soundly for the truth of his conclusions, in spite of his numerous potshots at philosophers.

The gaps that can be attacked I just call them defects. — Frederick KOH

Also, you seem to see the gaps that I have highlighted in Weinberg's pro-reductionism arguments to be minor defects akin to unfulfilled promissory notes. This could be said of the sort of "in principle" 'ontological reductionism' that often is claimed to be consistent with the falsity of merely 'epistemic reductionism'. Weinberg's true "final theory", for instance, could be claimed to lay, possibly, forever beyond the reach of human knowledge due merely to contingent limitations of human cognitive and/or computational powers. This all very well be true of the "final theory" of particle physics. But those contingent explanatory "gaps" have nothing to do with the flaws I have highlighted in Weinberg's conception of reductionism. Those flaws rather have to do with his overly narrow conception of causal explanation, which leads him to ignore many real and well understood non-reductive causal determinations of emergent phenomena. Weinberg's explanatory gaps are actually wider than the argumentatively filled up space between then. They consist in Weinberg passing over, or downgrading (e.g. as mere reflection on historical accidents) large areas of fruitful and uncontentious scientific practice and understanding.

You can offer rational arguments, but in many areas of life they are never airtight. People at the caliber of Weinberg know this. The gaps that can be attacked I just call them defects. You call them bullshit. — Frederick KOH

I call them bulshiting because you are characterizing them as being devised to gather approval from a jury who doesn't care one bit about their soundness and validity, because they purport to support preconceived notions uncritically accepted by this jury.

The similarity of his arguments to ones that would be used to defend naturalism. — Frederick KOH

That's rather unclear. You seem to be claiming that your construal of his argument may be defective (or intended for a jury of people who don't care about arguments at all -- owing to their having an unshakable faith in reductionism) but that it must be deemed to be relevant to Weinberg's argument because it is (in some unspecified respect) similar to arguments that "would be used" by others, though not by Weinberg himself, to reach the same conclusion?

Naturalism is also defective. But you are still going to choose the soup. He is pleading at a court that doesn't have philosophers in the jury. The same jury that would laugh at solipsism. — Frederick KOH

OK, so your view is that he's just pretending to advance rational arguments in favor of reductionism but he's merely bulshiting. He actually believes that his being a distinguished theoretical physicist entitles him to dismiss without argument the challenges put forward by both philosophers of science and fellow scientists such as Ernst Mayr, Michel Bitbol and George Ellis. And yet, in spite of this philistine attitude of his, he merely pretends to be rationally arguing against people who hold contrary views and whom he consider to be good friends and colleagues.

If the defects are the same as those of naturalism, he would not consider them defects. There is no conclusive argument against solipsism but we feel free to ignore it. — Frederick KOH

If Weinberg doesn't recognize them to be defects, then what relevance does this have to your assessment of his argument? Are *you* now acknowledging that Weinberg's reductionism is defective?

Wrong. Not entailment. Structural similarity. Naturalism suffers from the same structural defects as reductionism. — Frederick KOH

It didn't seem to me that Weinberg believes his own brand of 'convergence-of-explanatory-arrows' reductionism to suffer from structural defects. Did you see him express self-doubts that I may have missed somewhere in those two book chapters?

BTW, I think this is what Weinberg was trying to do with the soup and touch story. — Frederick KOH

Yes, because he believes naturalism (construed as the rejection of magical thinking cum super-naturalism) to entail 'reductionism' (as conceived by him) and hence, by contraposition, the rejection of 'reductionism' to entail super-naturalism. So, we agree on the form his specific argument. Now you can address my objections to it.

I don't know what your defences are. They changed enough that I felt a need to ask for a synthesis. — Frederick KOH

No. I've carefully read three book chapters and attempted enough explanations of what Weinberg's main argument is, and why I think it is unsound. My views didn't change (well, obviously they changed since I was a huge Weinberg fan 20 years ago) in spite of the fact that I tried to meet you mid-way though following your numerous side tracks. Now it's your turn to explain what you take Weinberg's main argument to be and why you take this argument not to be invalidated by my challenges.

What if I was using naturalism as a way to probe what counts as a valid defence in your eyes and do the same for Weinberg's reductionism? — Frederick KOH

Do it, then. Discussion would be much easier if you would lay your card down on the table, as I do.

Laying bare your presuppositions is all I did — Frederick KOH

You are seemingly trying to saddle with beliefs in radical relativism, magical thinking, or some such. However, just like your post-modern hero Rorty, I don't endorse relativism and I explicitly argue against it. Furthermore, unlike him, I don't recuse scientific discourse's claim to objectivity (though I don't restrict this right to scientific discourse alone, let alone to reductive modes of scientific explanation).

So it could turn out that the culture that does not recognize the naturalistic/non-naturalistic distinction might end up convincing you of its point of view. What happens to your original response to the soup and touch then? — Frederick KOH

Basically, all you are suggesting here is that if my epistemic powers are fallible then that entails that anything that I now believe to be true could be shown to me to be false. The response to this argument is either to acknowledge it as such and endorse a form of radical skepticism or, maybe, counter it with something like McDowell's epistemological disjunctivism. I would favor the latter, but it could be the topic of another thread on epistemology. I don't see the relevance of this to our discussion of Weinberg's reductionism.

Would you agree that they are different enough for a synthesis to be helpful? — Frederick KOH

They are different claims because they are making different points. Producing explanations and syntheses of Weinberg's arguments, and of my replies to them, it is all I do. Taking random pot shots and asking non-committal rhetorical questions seems to be all you do. I am sorry to say but your posts would resemble Trump's tweets rather more if they were just a bit longer and better articulated.

Instead of a reply why not reformulate your response to Weinberg's chicken soup and the king's touch based on what has been exchanged so far. — Frederick KOH

I did it twice already. Why not produce your own paraphrase of what you take to be a valid argument that runs from chicken soup to Weinberg's style arrows-of-explanation-reductionism?

How do you apply a distinction to practices within culture that does not recognize it (the distinction) without privileging you own? — Frederick KOH

This same problem arises whenever two people who belong to a common culture disagree. How do you apply a conceptual distinction to the "conceptual scheme" of an intellectual opponent who doesn't recognize this distinction without privileging your own "conceptual scheme"? First, there is no way of discussing anything that doesn't start from beliefs and understandings that are your own. (This is a point Putnam made, paraphrasing: "of course, I am presupposing the correctness of my own point of view in the world, whose else point of view could it be?") Secondly, this point also is reinforced by Davidson's considerations on the principle of charity and his views on radical interpretation. Davidson's considerations apply to the case of allegedly incommensurate cultures too. If a culture is to be intelligible as such (to an anthropologist or curious tourist, say) as embodying a body of knowledge and understanding of "its" world at all, then this only can be construed to be so on the background of an interpretation that discloses the beliefs of the members of this culture as being mostly true. This shared body of beliefs (and the understanding implied by them) then can serve as a stepping stone for engaging in a rational/political dialogue about the elements that are being disputed.

No, there is a chain from this that leads all the way to chicken soup and the king's touch. — Frederick KOH

The belief in the power of the King's touch would be one the the things this culture is wrong about. It may even be the case that the widespread wrong belief is false by that's cultures own lights. (A majority of people flouting a norm doesn't make it not a norm). There hardly is a valid inference from the humdrum claim that not all cultures share the same body of knowledge and/or make the same mistakes to the conclusion that magical thinking is vindicated.

That is one of the ways Weinberg explained his reductionism.

And I explained why Weinberg's rejection of magical thinking falls far short from vindicating his very specific form of reductionism, which, remember, isn't a pragmatically grounded proposal for a mode of scientific practice but rather purports to be a claim about "the way the world is".

Presuppose rather than claim. — Frederick KOH

What is it that I presupposed?

But naturalistic/non-naturalistic is a distinction our culture makes. You are applying it to practices in theirs. Is our culture privileged. — Frederick KOH

I was discussing Weinberg's arguments regarding reductionism and "arrows of explanation". I didn't make any claim regarding the comparative merits of distinct human cultures. That seems a bit pointless, as well as off topic (for this thread, anyway). Each human culture embodies wisdom about some things and misconceptions or blindness about others. That doesn't mean that all cultures are equal or that they are incommensurable. In spite of the fact that I am disagreeing with Rorty's somewhat post-modern radical rejection of objectivity, I am somewhat in agreement with his view of the pragmatic basis for the necessity of a widening of the sphere of inclusive solidarity as a ground for the refusal of radical cultural relativism.

That being the case, why this mode of explanation and not others? — Frederick KOH

OK, I see what you mean. My suggestion (or acknowledgement) that primitive (i.e. pre-scientific) societies rely on non-naturalistic explanations was a bit rash. When they explain a sickness by reference to the ingestion of some harmful plant, or the failure of a crop by reference to lack of rain, or why someone fell down because she tripped on a hidden tree root, they manifest a genuine understanding of nature. Those explanations are naturalistic. They may not know why exactly plants need water to survive or why this or that plant is poisonous, and they may be tempted to supply non-naturalistic explanations for those. E.g. they may attribute intentions and powers to gods or to salient features of nature itself.

It is a mistake, though, to conclude that what separates successful naturalistic explanations of a sickness, or of a crop failure, from an ineffective supernatural explanation is the primitiveness of the latter and the "reductibility in principle" of the former. Reductive scientific explanation just disclose one source of natural regularity among others (See Mayer's discussion of "analysis" in the previously referenced book chapter). The tribes-people may be wrong about the intentions of the gods (or, indeed, about there being gods) but they need not believe that the intentions of the gods are "fundamental" in Weinberg's sense, and hence unexplainable and to be accepted on faith. They rather believe gods (or animistically conceived forces of nature) to be parts of nature just as much as human beings are. Intentions of gods don't supply a successful explanation of real patterns of order in nature if the gods don't actually exist. The ostensive pattern in nature may in this case be illusory or, if real, misattributed. But there are other sorts of agents in nature whose intentions and reasons non-reductively explain what they do, namely human beings. And there are numerous examples of naturalistic albeit non-reductive explanations of phenomena within biology, physics and chemistry too. So, Weinberg's criteria of irreducibility and fundamentalism aren't good demarcation criteria of magical thinking versus objectively valid naturalistic explanation.

Could you provide a synthesis of this response and the original one? — Frederick KOH

My claims was and remains that the King's Trouch is a distraction. The issue of the King's Touch was raised by Weinberg because he believes faith in pure magic (and the attendant refusal to provide any explanation) to constitute the only possible alternative to his specific brand of reductive explanation. And he believes this because he can't countenance genuine scientific (or naturalistic) explanation not to consist into explanations of high-level scientific principles in terms of "deeper" scientific principles that belong to a more inclusive scientific theory that is closer to *the* unique "final theory". He isn't arguing against the possibility of a partial autonomy of the "special sciences" (Fodor's term), or of the possibility of intra-level causal explanation within emergent domains, or of downward causation from emergent properties to low-level ones. He is discounting those possibilities from the get go and without argument.

So back to the chicken soup and the King's Touch. Why? — Frederick KOH

You can leave the King's touch out of it. Superstition is rampant in both primitive and technologically advanced societies. What is at issue is the reductibility, or lack thereof, of successful explanations -- not illusory ones.