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.

Why can't someone say the same thing for grounds in general, natural or not? — Frederick KOH

Of course you can say it, truly. Grounds for functional behaviors of human artifacts, or grounds of human cognitive/social phenomena aren't any less plural than are grounds for natural phenomena.

But these things are achieved by even cultures that don't privilege naturalistic explanations. — Frederick KOH

That's certainly true. Naturalistic explanation just is one mode of explanation among many others. It does disclose specific empirical domains that aren't cognitively (or technologically) accessible through other means. But some cultures go by without much of it. They still are capable of making objective judgments and to provide varieties of rational explanations of human behaviors, animal behaviors, and natural phenomena -- some of which often elude us for want of familiarity with, and understanding of, untamed natural environments.

They are not nuclear bonds. — Frederick KOH

I meant molecular (or chemical) bonds. I've no idea how "nuclear" slipped though my fingers.

What is behind this privileging of naturalistic explanations? — Frederick KOH

This may be because we like to disclose order in nature, and disclosing pockets of order often affords opportunities for prediction and control within the empirical/technological domains thus disclosed. This satisfies both out thirst for theoretical knowledge and our needs for security (e.g. reliably finding food in the future). What is at issue in this thread is whether naturalistic grounds for order are plural or whether there might be just one unique fundamental ground for all the areas of orderliness that empirical investigation discloses in nature. Investigation into emergent phenomena -- both within and from physical domains -- seems to reveal pluralism to more sensibly portray nature and our cognitive access to it. This finding also harmonises with what is to be found in social sciences where the phenomena are at least partially constituted by our plural human practices.

Are they equivalent? — Frederick KOH

Weinberg would seem to need to assume that there is just one unique point of convergence to all his "arrows of explanation" lest there be more than one unique "fundamental" theory. And he indeed clearly asserts there to be only one such theory. He needs this to be the case for, else, he would need to investigate more closely the nature of the necessarily non-reductive inter-theoretic relations that hold in between his several "fundamental" theories -- he would have to relax his narrow conception of "explanation" -- and the basis of his faith in reductionism would begin to unravel.

What about the chicken soup? We treat it differently from the King's Touch without having first reduced it. — Frederick KOH

I already responded to this. It is the lack of confidence that there might be a naturalistic (i.e. non-supernatural) explanation of the healing power the King's Trough that undermines our faith in the genuineness of the phenomenon. In the case of the chicken soup, it is easier to imagine a naturalistic explanation. Such an explanation no doubt will make reference to some systemic effect of some ingredient in the soup on human physiology (or bacterial physiology). To assume that any such causal explanation ought to reduce to an explanation in terms of basic physico-chemical laws (let alone in terms of a "final theory" of quantum gravity) just is to beg the question against the non-reductionist. Even within the domains of chemistry and physics, there are lots of explanations of emergent phenomena that are primarily top-down (i.e. that display downward causation, multiple realizability and insensitivity to several features of material constitution, including micro-physical initial conditions).

Quote him. — Frederick KOH

This is a move he commonly makes, as your later chicken soup reference also illustrates. For instances, in Dreams of a Final Theory (p.62) he argues:

(Weinberg) "Finally, there is the question of emergence: is it really true that there are new kinds of laws that govern complex systems? Yes, of course, in the sense that different levels of experience call for description and analysis in different terms. The same is just as true for chemistry as for chaos. But fundamental new kinds of laws? Gleick's lynch mob provides a counterexample. We may formulate what we learn about mobs in the form of laws (such as the old saw that revolutions always eat their children), but, if we ask for an explanation of why such laws hold, we would not be very happy to be told that the laws are fundamental, without explanation in terms of anything else. Rather, we would seek a reductionist explanation precisely in terms of the psychology of individual humans. The same is true for the emergence of chaos. The exciting progress that has been made in this area in recent years has not taken the form solely of the observation of chaotic systems and the formulation of empirical laws that describe them; even more important has been the mathematical deduction of the laws governing chaos from the microscopic physical laws governing the systems that become chaotic." (My emphasis)

Notice that Weinberg again assumes that either the emergent laws must have reductive explanations in terms of deeper scientific principles that govern (in this case) the individual constituents of the high-level entities (i.e. the composite individuals picked up by the high-level "terms") or they must be believed by the strong emergentist to be governed by principles that are "fundamental" in the sense that they don't have any explanaton at all. Functional intra-level, and partly contingent historical, explanations are just ignored by Weinberg.

But Weinberg is also committing a form of projection here. He's the only one who claims that there must exist "fundamental" principles that can admit of no explanation at all. This is what he believes about his prospective "final theory". Emergentists, or pluralist anti-reductionists, need not believe (and few indeed do so believe) that there are laws at any level that are just given and that can have no explanation at all. (Though some of the boundary conditions that restrict their domains of validity may hold in some specific time and area as a matter of historical contingency, and hence need no other explanation than mention of the initial accident). Rather, it is partial autonomy of the high-level (so-called) principles that is claimed by emergentists to hold with respect to low-level laws. On the question of autonomy, as it relates to emergence, see Karen Crowther's enlightening paper 'Decoupling Emergence and Reduction in Physics', European Journal of Philosophy of Science, (2015) 5.

He gave an example using chicken soup and the King's touch. Is the outright dismissal of the King's Touch metaphysics? — Frederick KOH

The dismissal of the alleged healing power of the King's Touch is premised on the lack of a plausible naturalistic explanation (including the placebo effect). Most pluralist/emergentist philosophers that I know would have no trouble dismissing the alleged healing power as a likely myth or fraud. It need not be premised on the mere lack of a reductive explanation. It is Weinberg's belief that all genuine scientific explanation is, at base, reductive (i.e. must point downwards in the general direction of the unique "theory of everything" sought after by theoretical physicists) that leads him to assume that search for non-reductive explanations must be reliant on magical thinking. Lack of reduction doesn't amount to magic.

In his texts, his actual references to other sciences and the views expressed about them contradict what you say. — Frederick KOH

For him merely to be making "actual references" to other sciences hardly contradicts my claim that he believes then all to be less "fundamental" than particle physics. Are you denying that he both endorses reductionism and explains his brand of reductionism as the (alleged) convergence of "Why?" explanations (i.e. "arrows of explanation") that link laws and principles from one science to another more fundamental one? If you think "the views he expresses about" other sciences contradict what I say about those views, it would be useful if you would specify what those views are and what claims of mine you take them to be contradicting.

Finally...

Is this reductionist:

(Weinberg) "When Edelman says that a person cannot be reduced to molecu-
lar interactions, is he saying anything different (except in degree)
than a botanist or a meteorologist who says that a rose or a thun-
derstorm cannot be reduced to molecular interactions? It may or
may not be silly to pursue reductionist programs of research on
complicated systems that are strongly conditioned by history, like
brains or roses or thunderstorms. What is never silly is the per-
spective, provided by reductionism, that apart from historical ac-
cidents these things ultimately are the way they are because of the
fundamental principles of physics." — Frederick KOH

I've finished reading/re-reading Weinberg's two book chapters on reductionism a couple days ago. I also read one of Ernst Mayr's book chapter (Analysis or reductionism?, in What Makes Biology Unique: Considerations on the autonomy of a scientific discipline) in which he lays out the three forms of reductionism Weinberg refers to in Dreams of a Final Theory. But I have been busy with other things. I'll make more comments on both Weinberg and Mayr another time. I think Mayr's explanations of emergence have some problems too, though I agree with him more than I do with Weinberg.

Weinberg focuses on a specific kind of scientific explanations that purport to answer to "Why?" questions regarding scientific laws and principles from one theory, and seek to explain them with reference to another more "fundamental" theory. Explaining emergent laws with reference to laws that govern interactions between constituents of the entities that populate the ontology at the emergent level just is one case of such reductive explanations. Weinberg endorses a form of reductionism that doesn't purport to be pragmatic or methodological but rather amounts to a metaphysical claim regarding "the way the world is" empirically found to be. (In this respect, Rorty and Weinberg are at polar opposites). The way Weinberg cashes out this claim is through observing that the "arrows of explanation" embodied by his "Why?" questions (and their scientific answers) are seen to be converging towards a unique theory: quantum field theory (or some "final" theory that hopefully will unify the Standard Model of particle physics with a theory of quantum gravity).

Weinberg's denial of the autonomy of emergent domains of scientific explanation seems to rest on the belief that the affirmation of such an autonomy amounts to a denial that the laws and principles formulated at this higher-level can have any explanation. He thus views anti-reductionism, pluralism or strong emergentism as forms of obscurantism, super-naturalism or defeatism. It seems not to occur to him that "arrows of explanation" can have a genuine scientific explanatory role even when they don't tend to converge toward a unique "final" theory of everything. His affirmation of the empirical convergence of known arrows of explanation seem to rest on his favoring as more "fundamental" explanations of a reductive sort and thus his defense of metaphysical reductionism (as a statement regarding "the way the world is") ends up being circular.

Isn't the very idea of abstraction leaving things out? — Frederick KOH

One crucial non-reductionist (or pluralist) point that is often overlooked is that both bottom-up material/analytical explanations and top-down formal/functional explanations are achieved though a process of abstraction and hence both leave things out. The former leaves out irrelevant details of functional organization while the latter leaves out irrelevant details of material implementation. What it is that is relevant or irrelevant is conditioned by the pragmatic context and the interests of the theorist/scientist/engineer. None of those two modes of explanation is more fundamental than the other in an absolute sense. Both are incomplete.

Molecules in motion is one thing. Pressure, temperature and volume is another. — Frederick KOH

Indeed. That's because the ascription of properties such as pressure and temperature to macroscopic systems composed of many molecules can only be performed in a restricted range of conditions near thermodynamic equilibrium (or quasi-static equilibrium -- when there is a sufficiently slow transition from one equilibrium strate to another, as occurs, e.g., within individual stages of the Carnot cycle). Furthermore, pressure and temperature states aren't determinate micro-physical states but rather broad equivalence classes of them (a point emphasized by George Ellis's work on emergence and top-down causation). They specify states that are multiply realizable. That's why specifying the temperature and pressure of a specific sample of gas enclosed in a container abstracts away from the specific states of motion of the individual molecules and only determines broad statistical properties of them.

Thus, some emergent laws, such a the ideal gas law, are idealized abstractions that do indeed govern (some features of) the behavior of real gases in restricted ranges of circumstances. But the validity of those laws jointly depends on some of the laws that govern individual molecular interactions (e.g. conservation of energy and momentum) and also on the obtaining of specific boundary conditions of the whole systems that the theorist choses to focus on for some pragmatic and/or theoretical purpose. This focus entails abstracting away from some of the irrelevant features of material constitution and enables the formulation of high-level laws (and hence of unified formal/causal explanations) that apply to several different gases.