The case for scientific reductionism
Scientific reductionism means two different things. One definition is refers to changes in theories over time. So for example, people once believed the sun was a fiery chariot driven by Apollo, but eventually the chariot theory was replaced by the big-ball-of-hydrogen theory. Apollo was reduced to a mass of hydrogen (and helium). This is along the lines of a stipulation for the use of the word "reduction." We're going to call this kind of change reduction.
The second meaning of reductionism is the assertion that all sciences should reduce to physics (just as Apollo did). The argument for this hinges mainly on the success of physics up to this point. At least methodologically, scientists should continue to stick to what's been working for thousands of years. We should approach all topics available for scientific inquiry as if the goal is further reduction to physics.
Thoughts?
The second meaning of reductionism is the assertion that all sciences should reduce to physics (just as Apollo did). The argument for this hinges mainly on the success of physics up to this point. At least methodologically, scientists should continue to stick to what's been working for thousands of years. We should approach all topics available for scientific inquiry as if the goal is further reduction to physics.
Thoughts?
Comments (149)
This is something I am wrasseling with right now. The source I generally turn to is a paper by P.W. Anderson called "More is Different." He talks about the hierarchy of science and the relationships between different levels. Here's what he says:
Quoting P.W. Anderson - More is different
The footer of the quote has a link to the paper.
On the other hand, I'm currently reading a book by Addy Pross called "What is Life" about how life develops from non-living chemistry. In it, Pross claims that the rejection of reductionism is a mistake. That's why I'm wrasseling. I think he's wrong, but I'm reevaluating my position.
I forgot to mention - the article I linked is a reprint with a new introduction. The introduction is actually longer than Anderson's paper and has a lot more detail on the subject. You should take a look at it too.
Thus, in the first case, someone may discover some new information that finally negates an earlier accepted conclusion in science. The only reasonable thing to do at that point is re-evaluate the now questionable underlying theory until that can once again pass scientific rigor. This may then extend out to other theories that rely on this building block. Only then can science continue upward.
With this, we see the second case cannot be a viable reductionism argument for science. To conclude that everything must end in physics is the negation of the scientific ideal that nothing which has been learned can be questioned. Physics has no special place in scientific theories in this regard.
The Nagel approach says we will eventually reduce a baseball game to quantum theory by way of bridge laws which connect the dots. This is expected to be a matter of vocabulary.
So we will derive the baseball game from quantum theory with the bridge laws as a crutch.
Is this really true? We don't know. We may at some point discover that Yahweh has actually been pulling the strings the whole time.
It's more just the attitude that what scientists should be aiming for is this Nagel approach. If you agree with that, you're a kind of scientific reductionist.
Yes, well said.
I'm not familiar with Nagel, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. It seems like his position on reductionism relates mostly to it's presentation of consciousness as a physical process. His objection, if I understand it correctly, is that the reductionist approach ignores the experience of qualia.
Anderson's approach is completely different and much broader. It takes in all of science. I don't know but I'd imagine Nagel would not agree with Anderson's interpretation.
That's Thomas Nagel. The bridge-laws guy is Ernest Nagel.
I'll take a look.
But if they're more, what is this "more"?
Here we are reducing everything to physics but the right nagel escapes us.
We just need to Finn Nagel it.
A grammatically correct sequence of words may be used to express a system of ideas.
The word "expression" implies a vehicle for conveyance. A vehicle is something other than the thing being conveyed.
An expression is something separate from the thing being expressed.
A theory is something other than the words used to express it.
Reductionism as an approach has been astoundingly successful. But difficulties arise when it is applied to philosophical problems, because these are problems that concern subject of experience, not objects which can be quantified. Nearly all the complaints against reductionism in philosophy, including Thomas Nagel's criticisms, arise from the attempt to treat subjects as objects.
[quote=Thomas Nagel, The Core of Mind and Cosmos; https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-cosmos/]The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.
We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.
However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order our structure and behavior in space and time but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience how it is from the point of view of its subject without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.[/quote]
It's unclear to me what kind of things are "philosophical problems" or a "subject of experience". Also, the only object of scientific reduction is what Descartes, Galileo and Locke called "primary qualities", and therefore the criticism that reductionism cannot address or account for anything else is a category mistake (i.e. playing one language-game in terms of another). Thomas Nagel's idealist mysterian objection to modern physics is, I think, patently incoherent and amounts to an argument from incredulity.
Nagel's argument reminds me of Joe Sachs, who sees the prevalence of mathematics in modeling phenomena as a less than an unqualified success. From his essay: The Battle of the Gods and the Giants.
Lloyd Gerson says exactly the same in his essay 'Platonism v Naturalism'.
That they're 'unclear to you' is not an argument against it. It might just as well be an acknowledgement that you don't understand the problem.
The division between primary and secondary qualities is indeed central to the whole modern world-construct. As Nagel puts it succintly
[quote=Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36]The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop.[/quote]
You can see how this provides the context for the entire 'hard problem of consciousness' debate. But then, as you think that is a pseudo problem and that there really isn't any issue to discuss, then there really isn't any issue to discuss, so let's leave it at that.
Maybe it is time for a Gerson showdown. I understand Sachs as challenging the "Ur-Platonism" idea put forward by Gerson.
You know already of course that physics, the be-all-and-end-all of science, can be reduced to mathematics; mathematics is pure thought. Hallelujah! :cool:
Materialism reduced ... to immaterialism.
I didn't propose an argument, Wayf. I wonder if you can clarify those phrases what you mean by those terms.
The 'subject of experience' is the being to whom experiences occur. The 'problems of philosophy' are (for example) the kinds of problems about the nature of mind, nature of universals, number, ontology, metaphysics and so on. The problem of reductionism arises in the attempt to apply the quantitative approach of the sciences to the qualitative problems of philosophy.
Agreed. Deserves its own lane.
I think that this what @Paine is getting at.
Yes. That is what I am trying to say.
I find Sellar's idea of discursive categories useful: "the space or reasons" and "the space of causes".
The first is also the domain of qualities and 'why' questions while the second is the domain of quantities and 'how' questions. Conflating the two seems to be a perennial human stumbling block.
The inability of science to deal with the qualitative character of human experience is a feature not a bug.
So this "being" is any living, complex organism? (à la e.g. panpsychism, Berkeleyan idealism, etc)
Do they have definite (testable) solutions like math problems, logic problems & scientific problems? If not, I think 'speculative puzzles (aporia) or questions (gedankenexperiments)' are more accurately used in philosophical discourses than "problems".
Both are conceptual approaches especially insofar as the latter is applied to the former so this "quantitative-qualitative" distinction seems to make only a trivial difference.
Anyway, thanks for clarifying, Wayfarer. :cool:
Quoting Agent Smith
Maybe metaphysically, but not scientifically.
Embodied X "reduced ... to" dis-embodied Y. :roll:
:smile: Physics does reduce to math and that explains the existence of theoretical physicists (the guys who search the mathematical universe for objects that could be used to model the physical world). What really got me stoked was how many elementary particles were predicted to exist years before they were actualy discovered by experimental physicists i.e. math is one step ahead of physics and also that at all scales, mathematical objects abound). What sayest thou?
Quoting 180 Proof
So Shakespeare's plays & sonnets can be "reduced to" Elizabethan-era grammar (which was "one step ahead" of the Bard)? :sweat:
[quote=ChatGPT] O wondrous numbers, that can make us see
The secrets of the universe untold,
And in their symmetry, reveal to me
The laws that govern all that's bold.
In physics, where we measure what is real,
And seek to understand the why and how,
Mathematics is the mighty steel,
That cuts through ignorance and makes us know.
For every force and motion that we see,
And every energy that lights the stars,
Is but a tale, a story writ in thee,
And all the mysteries that still confound us, thus are ours.
So here's to thee, O Math, our guide so true,
In physics, and all else, our hearts anew.[/quote]
Now there's a triumph of reductionism, if ever there 'twas one.
Although on further contemplation, I reject the and all else in the last line. And much else - that I could go with.
Har de har har! Very funny! :smirk:
Mathematics isn't just grammar, is it? :chin:
The math models seem to correspond one-to-one with the physical world. That's uncanny if you ask me.
Math is formal grammar (i.e. logical syntax).
Have you forgotten, Smith, that the only "model" (map) that "corresponds one-to-one with the physical world" (territory) is "the physical world" (territory) because map =/= territory?
Do you mean to imply math-based scientific descriptions (maps) are (necessarily) incomplete? Shouldn't we then do something nonscientific? You know, to get the whole picture?
Intriguingly, mathematical maps are more suited for inanimate stuff (like rocket and their payloads) than the living; not that I won't follow the laws of gravity when and if I jump off the 5th floor of my apartment complex, but we seem to be autonomous and that translates into a rebellious nature insofar as the laws that govern our world is concerned.
Of course.
(e.g. Compare Aristotle-Ptolemy's models to Copernicus-Galileo's models and Newton's model to Einstein's model.)
I suppose we should first question speculate on whether or not there is a "whole picture". For instance, the mathematical concept of infinity (re: continuum hypothesis?) implies there cannot be a "whole". There's also the ancient concept of the apeiron endlessness that radically calls "the whole" into question too. All it seems we can know it everything we can know is encompassed by an unsurpassable transfinite? horizon. Is that "nonscientific" enough for ya, amigo? :smirk:
It's dark, oui? It's an intriguing paradox that the further we advance into the future, the further back into the past we can see. Hubble [math]\to[/math] James Webb [math]\to[/math] ?
Tell that Chat bot poetry composer that "how" and "know" do not rhyme. Neither do "stars" and "ours" for that matter. Where does that thing get its sense of rhythm? Send it back to school. and tell it to work with sound waves rather than letters, if it wants to write poetry.
Incidentally, that is the reason why the physical universe doesn't reduce to mathematics properly, the difference between numbers and waves. Mathematics cannot accurately represent waves because human geometry uses ideal representations of space which are unreal (evidenced by irrational ratios), and the result is the Fourier uncertainty principle. In reality the physical universe would only be accurately reducible via temporal concepts like frequency and rhythm. But this reduction doesn't get very far because division of the octave has always been fraught with problems.
Succinctly, we have not yet solved the problems exposed by the Pythagoreans. Nor have we solved Zeno's problems. Modern mathematicians have created elaborate structures which merely hide 'unsound' foundations. We see immense elegant mathematical structures and simply assume that they must have sound foundations, or else they couldn't be sustained. But sustenance of these just requires endless maintenance.
Anyone want to take the opposing view?
I'd argue against this form of reductionism.
Scientists haven't stuck to any methodological consideration for thousands of years. What works is dependent upon a community of scientists. And sometimes reductionism is a method which works to resolve problems, and sometimes it doesn't. It's this view of science being that Feyerabend targets when he says "anything goes" -- if science is an immutable, transcendental method of knowledge generation, and the method to understanding said method is to be gleaned by understanding what scientists actually do, and we look to the historical evidence of science the only theory one can propose that unites all historical scientific activity is to say "anything goes" -- whatever the scientists do in a current era, that's what the science is. Else, you'll find counter-examples of a proposed transcendental methodology.
Even removing the historical scope wouldn't work to make way for the claim that scientists reduce to physics: chemistry nor biology concern themselves with reducing to physics, and yet both will utilize physics for their own purposes and both utilize mathematical expressions in their own domains. (of course, this would depend upon which chemist and biologist -- organic synthesis in chemistry, for instance, is more concerned with synthesizing novel molecules, which follow their own set of rules which ahve been documented from experiments, and the only area of biology I can think of where physics would commonly interact would be bio-chemistry, such as the description of proton pumps which utilize quantum tunneling).
Roughly, the diversity of sciences outside of physics (where their methods are certainly more than reducing to physics) argues against the claim that scientists should reduce things to physics. Rather, science, as a whole, is a multiplicity of methods and approaches and foci. It's a social practice rather than a methodology.
That's such a good answer, it's challenging me to come up with a response that wouldn't be a soft pitch. :grimace: Thanks!
Quoting Moliere
I'd emphasize that I said that reductionism is the most rational approach. For instance, it was advised by Augustine in cases of examining miracles. He said we should first look for explanations that are mundane (worldly). It's the less dramatic approach, so it puts mysticism on the shelf. Should we find in the future that we need to resort to ghosts and demons, we have those options available, but as we peek behind the curtain, let's first expect to find gears and levers.
So I would respond to you by saying that reductionism is already what rational scientists are doing. The normativity I'm presenting isn't meant to dictate to scientists some foreign methods. It is what they're already doing.
Quoting Moliere
I would just comment that most biologists are in the business of making medications, so they actually don't need much more than physics. This is to touch on the fact that science doesn't take place in a vacuum. Sages have always been called upon to use their wisdom to help grow crops, cure the sick, etc. Except in the 19th Century when scientists were usually wealthy gentlemen, scientists depend on society for funding and support. Science is grounded in the mundane from the start.
How'd I do?
I believe "reductionism" can definitely be made richer than your opening does. If you could make the case that individual sciences utilize reductionism, and that said utilization is the most rational way of doing science, then that'd undercut my second point since I was arguing against the notion that science reduces specifically to physics, which I think is just an easily disproven belief. All you need do is point out the theory of evolution, which is clearly a novel scientific theory which didn't reduce life to physics. But if reductionism isn't just the restatement of scientific theories in the terms of physics, my second argument, at least, would then be irrelevant. (EDIT: And, to be clear, my first paragraph points out how my answer, while rationally defensible, is at least unsatisfying, so there's still room for conversation)
Despite the success of reductionist science it can lead to blindness. The zoologist Adolf Portmann gives careful attention to the appearance of animals. A biology that does not observe living things is necessarily deficient. Could a reductionist approach ever lead to Portmann's consideration of the difference between the the appearance of the inside and outside of animals?
Mechanics (all kinds)
Molecular theory and its relationship to the atom. (in particular I think the notion of molecular structure, rather than just the structure of things smaller than atoms, is something which chemists use that isn't exactly physics)
Evolutionary theory of speciation
Anthropogenically caused global warming (chemistry gives this a lot of support, in my view, but it was climate scientists doing climate science)
The germ theory of disease (and medical science, generally, I think walks its own way while simultaneously using other sciences in its own practices)
The theory of Plate tectonics
At least, these are the sorts of theories that I think of as distinct, and non-reductive with respect to one another.
But that's just the big-picture theory of science where we really believe it constructs some kind of unified picture. As soon as we let go of that, reductionism really is everywhere in scientific practice. It's just not so straightforward as a reduction to physics.
:up:
Quoting Moliere
Could you explain what's meant by "transcendentalism"?
Quoting Moliere
So let me ask: do you think biology can't be reduced (in the Nagelian sense) to physics? Or are you just saying it hasn't been as of yet?
There's a habit of thought where we come to see things with respect to that thought a lot. So with Popper you have this account which supposedly solves the problem of induction as well as the problem of demarcation, and lays out a rationality that scientists should follow in their theorizing.
It's all very interesting, only it doesn't look much like what scientists actually do.
Yet, we can double down and say, where scientists are not following a purported rationality, that is where they are being irrational and unscientific.
That's the move I think I'd guard against. I think it better to let history trump our ratio-centric re-statements of what we believe might be going on, in accord with a certain rationality we choose (because how else would you judge it rationally than be first choosing your rationality?)
For some reason or other, this way of doing things seems to produce sentences which are applicable to more than one -- and in fact many -- circumstances. But that "for some reason", so I believe, is not a conceptual boundary. So I think to answer your question here:
Quoting frank
I was thinking how given that Darwin's proposal, in his own time, did not reduce to physics, yet it was science, and we continue to believe it and count it as science (though the story gets more complicated along the way), then that shows how science does not always reduce to physics.
Maybe in some sense in the future it could, but just having a moment is enough to show how scientific practice, in particular, does not reduce to physics.
But, more straightforward for what I believe: I don't really believe it could be reduced, though I'm not firm on that notion. But that's where I stand.
I'd agree that the argument from rationality has this weakness: that rationality pretty much just comes down to fashion. In the 18th Century it was rational to believe that exsanguination (draining blood) cures pneumonia. Medical experts said it did, and that's all it takes to get the rationality badge. In order for science to flourish and grow we'll have to allow scientists to develop tomorrow's fashion statements.
So yes, I agree with you.
Quoting Moliere
But as a theory, I think evolution is amenable to reduction to physics. Darwin just didn't live long enough to read Schrodinger's book on it. I don't think he would have objected. If your point is that Darwin didn't start with Newtonian laws and work his way up to evolution, I don't think that's what reductionists are suggesting scientists should do. Are they?
Quoting Moliere
Any reasons why?
Oh no, I don't think they'd make that simple of a mistake. So not the latter. I haven't read Schrodinger's book, so I cannot comment on that work, only to say that even if we perform this reduction, the practice of science, rather than the concepts of science, are what make it what it is This distinction between concept and practice is mostly what I was trying to get at -- the reduction occurs between concepts, but science is defined by what scientists do rather than the conceptual content of their theories. At least with respect to how I generally come to understand science in my method (where history trumps conception, though there is an interplay there too)
What's your assessment of the book?
Quoting frank
More in the realm of "difficulties" than full on reasons -- but then noticed your opening point fit closer to your question here.
The thing I'd bring up is that "species" doesn't have a physics analogue. And, at present, though we are still building a mechanical theory of life, there's no reason to believe that said mechanical theory of life will reduce to physics, since biochemistry still utilizes chemical terms (like identifying molecules by structure, mass, temperature, etc.). And descriptions of life frequently utilize teleological notions, which is something else you'd have to figure out how to reduce or explain away (something like "what they really mean is..." rules) Even with our metabolic pathway mapped out molecularly, you won't find a behavior in that map that puts the food into the mouth to get the metabolic pathway going. Animal behavior, psychology, frequently utilizes notions which at least are not clearly reducible to physics... you see a pattern. :D
I guess it would be looking at, what constitutes a bridge law? What counts as a reduction to physics?
At the end, I think what convinces me that it's not possible is just the sheer diversity of the sciences today. There's so much, and so much of it has been successful without bothering with physics, that I begin to wonder what's the point of bridge laws anyways?
:up:
Yeah but I still thought it was pretty good.
One of Darwin's major contributions was to replace the idea of 'kinds' with variations. Is the difference between biology and physics a difference in kind or variation? Put differently could an intelligence that far exceeds our own that has knowledge of physics but no knowledge of biology eventually develop that knowledge?
However we might answer that question it should be kept in mind that for us any reduction of biology to physics is made possible because of our knowledge of biology. I don't think we could arrive at knowledge and understanding of the wholes of biological beings with only the "parts" from physics.
[Corrections made]
I want to say they are a distinction of kinds, but I think I get there from the more general question about science as a whole, i.e. my reading of the interplay between mostly Popper and Feyerabend, plus just thinking about all the things science consists in when taken as a historical entity rather than a conceptual one.
So I want to say that biology, even with time and in an intelligence highly developed, cannot reduce to physics. However, I want to say it in this qualified sense where I just want to bring difficulties forward, rather than say, categorically, this cannot take place.
That is, I think that's my side. That's my suspicion. But, hey, I'm talking here for a reason. :D
Stumbling my way through I'll try this and see where it leads. Ontologically I am a reductionist. Life is not a fundamental, that is to say, life emerges from things that are not alive. Epistemologically, however, life is fundamental. We cannot understand life without beginning with things that are alive. We must work at it from both ends. The problem with reductionism is that it reduces things to something other than they are.
Ontologically I'm an absurdist, or at least that's how I like to put it now. I'm obviously still thinking through things. But this is just to say where I'm at, rather than go down another rabbit hole.
In the vein of Kant's denial that metaphysics is knowledge -- I'm uncertain where I'm at ontologically. It seems as if one could posit anything, and it would be accepted more based upon where we're at, how it'd help us, and all that. But ontology is supposed to be more general than desire, usually.
So while the words of philosophers which speak ontologically make sense I'm not comfortable with committing to any ontological reductionism I've come across so far.
Epistemologically, I think, is how I'm approaching the problem, through the lens of the history of science as scientists being the ones who make science.
Quoting Fooloso4
I agree with this! And I believe that is @frank's point, too, only noting that we might be able to make a reduction after all.
I suppose, given the diversity of all the sciences, I still feel skeptical about a reduction to physics.
Most broadly speaking, reduction is not about ontology. You could be an idealist reductionist (like Berkeley).
Nagel's approach is about the reduction of one theory to another. This leaves both theories intact. When we say biology should reduce to physics, we don't mean biology should disappear and be replaced by physics. That's eliminativism.
There's no need to "reject" Reductionism as the method for scientific analysis (dissection) of Nature into its elements. There's still some de-construction work to do. But as your quote implied, you can't construct a real material universe from squishy superposed (not yet real) Quantum non-particles. Nevertheless, according to some physicists, the world now appears to be organized from fundamental "bits" of information (Wheeler's "it from bit").
Since the 20th century, belief in tiny (invisible) Particles of stuff (atoms), as the elementary element of Physics, has been gradually & grudgingly superseded by nonlocal continuum Fields of information patterns, consisting of an imaginary grid of mathematical points with no extension in space. At least that is true for theoretical (mathematical) physicists. Meanwhile, some empirical scientists, and Materialist philosophers continue to view the world in terms of ancient Greek atoms and 17th century Newtonian matter .
In the 21st century, the Santa Fe Institute, of which Anderson was a founding member, focuses on "Complex Systems" in which inter-relationships (Information) are more important than the nodes of the grid. YouTube physicist Sabine Hossenfelder seems to think that reductionist physics has lost its way. Maybe a "bit" of Holistic Physics can put it back on track. In any case, philosophers don't construct their models from particles of matter. :smile:
Physicists Debate Whether the World Is Made of Particles or Fields :
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-debate-whether-world-made-of-particles-fields-or-something-else/
Santa Fe Institute :
But the way in which complex phenomena are hidden, beyond masking by space and time, is through nonlinearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence a deck of attributes that have proved ill-suited to our intuitive and augmented abilities to grasp and to comprehend.
https://www.santafe.edu/what-is-complex-systems-science
What is it from bit theory? :
It from Bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom at a very deep bottom, in most instances an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions
https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/09/02/it-from-bit-wheeler/
What's Going Wrong in Particle Physics? :
Sabine Hossenfelder (This is why I lost faith in science.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu4mH3Hmw2o&t=254s
I haven't read anything by Shrodinger :razz: Even trying to understand the debate about chemistry reducing to physics goes straight over my head pretty quickly. I'd need a philosopher/scientist to give me the synopsis, and I don't know who that would be (yet).
:up:
This is not true.
I think I'm tracking. I didn't think you were positing eliminativism.
More bringing up difficulties that come to mind. I'll admit to not reading the Nagel yet -- I gotta do Marx. I just had thoughts to get out there to share.
Cool.
I mean, it's Schrodinger, so I'm guessing it's pretty esoteric :D -- dude had beliefs about the reality of waves in opposition to the particle interpretation of quantum mechanics. (spoiler: turns out they are mathematically reducible to one another). All the quantum pioneers had very different beliefs, it seems to me. It has thus far been judged as uninteresting for scientific purposes.
But to concur with part of where you started, with respect to science really beginning in the mundane (I just hadn't thought of anything to respond to it until now): the reason quantum interpretation is judged as "pure theory" (so only pursued by the brave few who stake their career on it) is because we live within the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie!
Very true. You read Marx. I'm reading The Sensible Guide to Forex by Cliff Wachtel. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. :grin:
Look, in the people's scientific resistance to the romans...
:razz:
That's the way poetry rolls. There's no need to follow any particular rules. And if certain styles become conventional, often it's stretching the bounds of the convention which makes the poetry good. Or, like in your example it's good for other reasons, and going outside the conventions really doesn't matter, because that 's the way poetry rolls.
The term ontology does not have an single agreed upon usage or definition . I mean that the most basic "stuff" of the world is physical. The term reductionist does not have a single agreed upon usage or definition either. As I am using the term in the sense that nothing else is posited as fundamental. All that comes to be, life, consciousness, mind, comes to be from the physical structures, forces, and interactions that underlie them.
Fair points.
So the belief that "The most basic "stuff" of the world is physical" and the belief that "all that comes to be, life, consciousness, mind, comes to be from the physical structures, forces, and interactions that underlie them" -- I think both of these beliefs would qualify as "ontologically" as I was using the term.
I am uncertain to the extent it is rational to believe either of those. Which isn't the same as to say they are not true. However, if they are not rational to believe, even if they are true, they'd fall into the mythic portion of philosophy: the stories told for those who need a story.
For my money it's a good myth. But I'm uncertain to what extent I believe it, really, or to what extent one can believe anything about what is fundamental. It seems to me that any posited fundamental stuff can be justified. You just have to pick the right rules of rationality for them.
From the Arche thread about likely stories.
Regarding terminology:
I might say @180 Proof "atoms and the void" but there are no atoms.
"Nagel describes his model as follows:
"A reduction is effected when the experimental laws of the secondary science (and if it has an adequate theory, its theory as well) are shown to be the logical consequences of the theoretical assumptions (inclusive of the coordinating definitions) of the primary science. (Nagel 1961: 352)
"The basic idea is simple: a theory TR reduces to a theory TB if and only if TR is derivable from TB with the possible help of the relevant bridge laws (here labeled coordinating definitions), often with an emphasis of the derivation of the laws of the reduced theory. If we add the remarks Nagel opened his discussion on reduction withnamely, that reduction has to be understood as a certain kind of explanation (1961: 338)the core idea of the Nagel model is fully characterized. Adding Nagels idea of reduction as a kind of explanation, the so called Nagel model of reduction can be fully specified as follows: Reduction is (i) a kind of explanation relation, which (ii) holds between two theories iff (iii) one of these theories is derivable from the other, (iv) with the help of bridge laws under some conditions. The basic model covers two sorts of reduction, one in which bridge laws are not required (homogeneous cases) and one in which they are (nonhomogeneous cases; for a presentation of homogeneous cases of reductions and the question of whether or not alleged cases of reductions really should count as reductions in the Nagelian sense, see the entry on intertheory relations in physics). Nagel conceives of sciences or theories as developing entities that undergo changes, across which their vocabulary remains unchanged (though it is, presumably, sometimes extended). These successive states of theories are covered by the notion of homogeneous reductionsdeduction of an early stage from a later stage of a theory is possible without bridge laws since they share a common vocabulary. Nonhomogeneous cases of reduction hold between pairs of different theories, employing different vocabularies. Whereas the former variant of reduction did not attract much attention (by Nagel and others), the latter has been a subject of intense discussion since Nagel introduced it in 1949." SEP article on scientific reduction
The downside:
"Many criticisms have been raised against both the original Nagel model and its variants. The original Nagel model was faulted as too narrow because it allows only for theory reduction (Wimsatt 1972; Hull 1976; Darden & Maull 1977: 43; Sarkar 1992), whereas an appropriate model would cover cases of reduction of mere models and the likesciences like biology and neuroscience should be regarded as being possible candidates for reduction, although they do not contain full-fledged theories (see also the entry on reductionism in biology; for a discussion of this and the following criticisms, see van Riel 2011).
"In a more general sense,the Nagel model has been criticized as exemplifying all the shortcomings of the orthodox view on science. For example, it conceives of theories as syntactic entities, and it views reduction as explanation cashed out in terms of the DN model (Hempel & Oppenheim 1948), which has itself been challenged on many grounds, especially those regarding the asymmetry of explanation (for an overview that focuses on problems arising from reduction as explanation, see Craver (2007: chap. 2), and for problems concerning the DN model, see Salmon 1989)."
Would you agree that a scientific theory is a syntactic entity? If so, the bridge laws are just a matter of translation.
Quoting T Clark
Wow! Total rejection. Can you be more specific about which part of that assertion seems to be untrue to you : "nonlocal" or "continuum" or "fields" or "information patterns" or "imaginary" or "points", or all of the above? Information theory assigns value to the pattern of relationships (geometry) even if the dimensionless-point-in-space has no physical substance. Such an abstract notion is difficult to grasp, but it is essential to Quantum & Information theories. :smile:
Real talk: Everything is made of fields :
[i]To understand what is going on, you actually need to give up a little bit on the notion of particles, physicist Sean Carroll said in the June lecture.
Instead, think in terms of fields.
Carrolls stunner, at least to many non-scientists, is this: Every particle is actually a field. The universe is full of fields, and what we think of as particles are just excitations of those fields, like waves in an ocean. An electron, for example, is just an excitation of an electron field.
This may seem counterintuitive, but seeing the world in terms of fields actually helps make sense of some otherwise confusing facts of particle physics.[/i]
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/july-2013/real-talk-everything-is-made-of-fields
Note -- Can you imagine a mathematical point in empty space getting excited? It's a philosophical metaphor attempting to make an invisible abstraction imaginable. Like much of Quantum Physics, such notions are counter-intuitive and seemingly paradoxical.
FIELDS AND PARTICLES :
Broadly speaking, a field is a collection of properties ascribed to regions of space (one might also speak of the region itself as being "the field"); if the properties are quantifiable then the field is a mathematical function of spatial coordinates,
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/fields-and-particles
"In vector calculus, a field is an assignment of a value (vector value for a vector field, scalar value for a scalar field) to every point in space".
https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-Field-mathematics
[i]"What is a Point in Math? :
In classical Euclidean geometry, a point is a primitive notion that models an exact location in space, and has no length, width, or thickness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_(geometry)
I'm having a hard time coming up with a response. I've written a few and then I feel like it's entirely wrong :D I can't tell if we're in agreement here now, in that we cannot know that such a reduction could take place (so it is perhaps better to believe in a void), or if you advising me to adopt physicalism and reduction on the basis that it's the most likely story, and we cannot know more, so it's wise to accept this likely story?
And I'll try not to get stuck on terminology. I at least share your suspicion of philosophical terminology, in that while it can clarify it can also be the thing your mind is getting stuck on and it's actually confusing in some circumstances. But I'm not sure where in this conversation the terminology has led me astray. My guess is it's with the use of "ontology" and "reduction" and "metaphysics" -- but I thought we're using the terms closely enough. I understood your definitions of ontology and reduction.
OK, tomorrow, I'll read up. But the thoughts are still buzzing so that's what's shared here:
That's not how I'd put it, mostly because syntactic entities usually do not include activity. But I could go along with the notion all the same, because I believe I'm tracking what you've typed: and I'm still on the "no" side and working through the reasons why. (I have opinions, but I'm talking because I'm still not clear on them.)
"Logical consequences" seem odd to me. Do theories have logical consequences? It seems to me that theories have interpretations which can be used to do experiments to demonstrate or build upon what's been demonstrated. Theories, once called, usually are the means by which we explain individual experiments, rather than some kind of coherent uber-picture. They are very particular -- so we have the science of mechanics, and within the science of mechanics you have statics and dynamics of classically sized objects, you have thermodynamics and electrodynamics, statistical and quantum mechanics, and each of these has their own statements within their books that do not logically imply one another. They cohere, but that's not the same thing. If you're doing a thermodynamical experiment, you wouldn't use "F=ma" because that's not the sort of experiment you are doing.
However, you can crib from other sciences for your purposes (hence the kinetic theory of heat). If it works for your question, for your experiment, go ahead. And I'd say that treating the sciences as if they cohere is a very common, regulative belief that is fruitful. (But notice that's not the same thing as to say that it's a true belief).
But that's not the same as seeing theories as logical consequences of one another. And I don't think that's generally even a goal of scientists.
And if the sub-fields within mechanics don't even logically imply one another, and they are much closer in concept, I then have a reason to doubt that there will be, say, a mechanics which logically implies, say, that all living creatures are related through speciation of a common ancestor.
True. Carnap says that all sciences have these in common: the same kind of observer, the same kinds of observation, and the same world being observed (that's loosely paraphrasing). It's a phenomenological approach that implies that science (and maybe all knowledge) is a unity.
I am not advising you or anyone else who might be reading this to accept this or any other likely story. It may be that what is and has been going on may turn out to not be likely at all. I am approaching these questions speculatively and dialogically, but I don't expect much will come of it. The real work is being done elsewhere.
Quoting Moliere
Although I was responding to your post I was speaking in general terms. It is common in these discussions for someone to insist that ontology or reductionism or metaphysics means this or that, and will carry in their baggage.
I may have been misled by your mention of Kant. Kant on metaphysics and ontology leads to the kind of rabbit hole you are wisely trying to avoid.
But the inherent difficulties of the materialist theory of the atom, which had become apparent even in the ancient discussions about smallest particles, have also appeared very clearly in the development of physics during the present century.
This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units are ordinary physical objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers. Here, the development of quantum theory some forty years ago has created a complete change in the situation. The mathematically formulated laws of quantum theory show clearly that our ordinary intuitive concepts cannot be unambiguously applied to the smallest particles. All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use them of elementary particles. I cannot enter here into the details of this problem, which has been discussed so frequently in recent years. But it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.
During the coming years, the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?
I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or in Plato's sense Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics.[/quote]
This is why I much prefer Kuhn's description of science over Popper. What Popper describes is what a lot of scientists would like science to be in an ideal world, but it is completely impractical. It cannot be achieved in reality.
While Kuhn better describes what scientists actually do in reality.
That doesn't mean I think Popper's description has no merit. I think it has merit as an ideal, not as what scientists can practically do.
Understood. The denial of atoms was intended to illustrate my point about terminology. The term atom is still being used, but it means something different than what Democritus meant. And now it is not only that atoms are divisible but that talk of particles is being rejected and replaced by fields.
Quoting Fooloso4
:fire:
M'kay, cool.
I guess I just have a feeling about an answer to the question, more than anything. So I was attempting to work out that answer in the thread.
So dialogic, speculative -- but not work. I don't labor under the delusion that there aren't others who are better than I at this working on these very questions :D. I just have that itch to scratch!
Quoting Fooloso4
Cool. That helps me in thinking through your post.
The one thing I'm importing from Kant is the denial of metaphysics as knowledge -- however, in some of my initial attempts at responding I was trying to qualify in what way and all that, and it started to spiral off :D. But I'm not as clear on it as he is, and I don't even agree with his project. It's in the background of my thinking, however. And roughly what I think I'd try to defend is the belief that scientific knowledge does not lead to knowledge about what fundamentally is the case, or the fundaments of reality. Now, maybe that's entirely off base from the notion of likely stories, or even of theory reduction. But just to say more about why I mentioned Kant.
It is not true that particles have been superseded.
Particles have been superseded by fields
@gnomon was composed of particles.
Therefore
Gnomon has been superseded.
Sad.
And what of the famous wave-particle duality? Is matter 'really' a wave, or is is 'really' a particle? Neils Bohrs answer was, basically, 'it depends on what experiment you perform'. In some contexts it manifests as a wave, in others as a particle, but what 'it' is, remains unknown (and futile to speculate about).
None of us here will solve these conundrums.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure looks like we're still thinking in terms of particles or quanta, even if not unequivocally so.
// oh, I guess you mean the 'person in the street'.//
[quote=Adam Frank] When I was a young physics student I once asked a professor: Whats an electron? His answer stunned me. An electron, he said, is that to which we attribute the properties of the electron. That vague, circular response was a long way from the dream that drove me into physics, a dream of theories that perfectly described reality. [/quote]
Well, yes all that much is obvious, but it doesn't change the fact that physicists still think in terms of particles. Democritean atoms are as easy to envisage as excitations of fields, and both are envisaged in terms of macroscopic analogs, like billiard balls and bodies of water. But neither are commonsense objects, since we cannot imagine how an object that exists could be indivisible .
Now we have electronic fields, fermionic fields, gluon fields and Higgs fields. but all those fields are understood to be related to their respective particles. And we have the fundamental quantum foam where existence and non-existence merge; still a binary. All our thinking is binary, there is no escaping that.
It seems clear enough to me that meaningful thought and belief(experience or consciousness, if you like) are reducible to neither physical events nor physics, similar to Davidson's anomalous monism(without 'mental' events).
How does one reduce meaningful correlations drawn between different things to physics?
The problem though, is that mathematics really does not give a "clear-cut account of what is going on". The uncertainty principle is produced by the application of the mathematics, in an attempt to understand elementary particles. The uncertainty is not resolved by the mathematics. So this statement from Heisenberg is not true at all.
And the conclusion drawn from that statement, that the elementary parts of material objects are "Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics" is not a sound conclusion either. The reality of the situation is quite the opposite, that quantum theory demonstrates to us that the elementary parts cannot be understood through the application of conventional mathematics. The uncertainty principle is obviously a failing of our mathematics, in its capacity to understand the reality of space, time, and material existence, not a success of our mathematics.
I don't know the answer to your question. Could it be it's as if you're asking a person from 50 CE: "how does one get to the moon?"
"One day" is the answer I think a reductionist would give.
Would you argue that it isn't possible to reduce our theories of consciousness to physics?
The base of the problem is found in Zeno's paradoxes, and manifests in the way that calculus resolves the issue with the concept of approaching the limit, or approaching zero. When this concept is applied to the temporal existence of waves, the uncertainty principle rears its ugly head.
To determine the features of waves requires a period of time because waves are activities. As the period of time utilized becomes shorter and shorter, the capacity to determine the wave features is debilitated, and the result is an increase in uncertainty. As the zero point in time is approached, uncertainty approaches infinity. In classical mechanics this was the problem of infinite acceleration required for a change in motion . Any body at rest, if it began to move, would require a time of infinite acceleration at the point when it was caused to move. The problem transposes to relativity theory when a body at rest is replaced with a body with uniform motion, and we consider changes to that motion.
So we have a fundamental incompatibility between "position" which refers to a object's rest spot, and "velocity" (or any wave features) which implies no rest spot. What is demonstrated by the need to employ the concept of "infinite" in the calculus which relates these two, is that our way of plotting an object's position, and our way of plotting an object's movement, are fundamentally incommensurable. This basic incommensurability demonstrates that our mathematics of "space" is fundamentally inadequate. Zeno demonstrated this very well with the tortoise and the hare. And the issue remains as the uncertainty principle.
I'm thinking that my mechanics example is a good one to work through, along with the mechanics to biology contrast.
So let us define a theory, first. I would say theory is understood by coming to understand particular theories, which we find in science textbooks and learn through training. By coming to learn particular theories we can get a sense of what we generally mean by "theory". It is this usage of "theory" that I intend.
Physics textbook
Biology textbook
Mostly providing the links to coordinate our conversation, not to delimit the set of possible examples. Just "here's a ballpark estimate of the sorts of theories I believe we're talking about"
It seems to me, from reading your article, that as long as the terms being used by scientists have the same extensions then they are considered reduced to one another, while also admitting in bridge principles.
So, one thing I'd like to note here is that insofar that we are able to introduce auxiliary propositions to a theory then, naturally, we can always save the belief that the sciences reduce to physics. If we find something inconvenient, we can use link type 2 in the above -- I'm guessing "fiat" is any consistent set of logical functions which are chosen to ensure the extensions between terms being compared are the same -- and bridge two principles together.
But then later the SEP article notes an informal distinction between arbitrary and non-arbitrary reductions.
Which is good because it blocks against the argument I was thinking of making :D
So as the biology textbook highlights, chemistry could serve as a non-arbitrary set of bridge laws between biology and physics.
But then the second condition of non-arbitrary reduction "the reducing theory should be better established than the reduced one" -- that is an odd notion. But just going along with the words and seeing where it takes me: I tend to think biology is better established than chemistry! :D
But we can overlook that. The biology textbook utilizes chemical concepts to talk about how cells and life work. But what I do not see is a reduction of the functions of the cell to the physical level. The functions of the cell are still an important part of understanding the phenomena of life, even if understanding the molecular interpretation of life further elucidates and deepens our understanding of why life is behaving in accord with such and such a function.
But the way biologists use "function" -- you won't find an extension for that in the physics textbook, nor will you find anything but metaphoric talk in the chemistry textbooks about function. So on page 109 of the above pdf biology book: "Organelles are cell structures with specialized functions that will be discussed in section 4.4" -- this is my intended meaning of "function".
Now if we can ignore the intension then that would take away the argument from meaning that I'm making. Though that'd also strike out one of the kinds of links proposed as bridge laws, leaving fiat, and empirical fact. Fiat is ruled out by arbitrary/non-arbitrary distinction, but that's how I got here in the first place. Which leaves link 3, an empirical fact, and that much we can say is true of chemistry. However, it's also true that Mars is the 4 planet from the sun. Why not propose that as a bridge law, if all we need is an empirical fact? (comes back to arbitrary/non-arbitrary...)
... I'm not sure. I'm coming back to "what's the point of these bridge laws again?" It seems to me that, sure, we'll be able to come up with sentences that fill in the gaps to make up a totality, but then as science changes we'll have to continue to update that picture.
Mitochondria have a number of functions, including producing ATP. Obviously this is a cherrypicked example because we know mitochondria were originally independent critters which were eaten by bigger cells who then started using them as metabolic regulators. It's not too hard to see functionality in this case as the result of a happy accident (happy for us, since we're the result of those ancient events).
It's true that once we start explaining function in this way (that it's stuff that happens accidently), the line between life and non-life fades. But I think that's the point of reduction?
If you're talking about the Hadron collider, I kind of lean in that direction as well. That was a lot of money spent, for what exactly?
Quoting frank
Right! So this is a statement which seems to link a name and two biological concepts (Name,concept,concept: Mitochondria,functions,producing) with one chemical name (which, sure, I'll count that as a concept).
Is this now a bridge law? Is it enough to find a harmonious example between two disciplines?
Quoting frank
I'm not so sure that the distinction fades, at least not for me. But I hasten to add I don't mind it fading. And I'm not sure what the point of reduction is :D -- maybe, as @Fooloso4 mentioned, I'm getting stuck on "reduction" too much.
Perhaps the belief is just that, someday, the sciences will form a coherent whole of some kind?
What I've always felt about science is that it provides several ways of looking that enrich understanding rather than limit it. We could restate everything in terms of some physical laws, especially once we allow logical functions and fiat such that any set of sentences can count as bridge laws as long as their extensions are the same and they are true (so I imagine at least, it wasn't exactly spelled out I'm just giving an interpretation). But that restatement wouldn't be as rich as knowing both it and what it is a restatement of -- propositions which utilize the locution "function" stated by scientists writing textbooks, at least (this is a valid avenue of attack, I'd say -- textbooks are pedagogic, rather than literal. They are written to catch people up rather than state, here is the true scientific analysis).
I would say the sciences are independent of one another, and their harmony is something sought after by us because we like it. And sometimes we find it, which is nice! But that's not the same thing as to say everything will, or could be, reduced to physics. But I'm questioning "reduced" now...
I think reductionism needs to be looked at from both ends - more complex things can be broken down into simpler components, but in order to understand complexes, attempting to reconstruct them from their components is not necessarily or always the best approach.
We would start with chemistry and bridge up to the biological function as a category of processes required for the endurance of the system. All chemistry has to do is explain cell respiration, digestion, metabolism, etc. We enter the bridge when we collect those explanations and serve them up as to how the organism endures?
Quoting Moliere
Gotcha.
I'm wondering if @apokrisis has an opinion on this they'd be willing to share.
My intent in using the metabolism example is to say, hey, yes, we can already map the chemical pathways of these things. But that chemical map doesn't explain why the animal eats. Why does an animal make decisions at all? In what way are even single-celled organism's decisions to respond to sugar gradients predicated upon any physical law? (or is the observation that they respond to sugar gradients a physical law? are all observations observations of physical laws?)
**
One of the things I want to mention, though it could throw us too far off course so I'm separating it off -- something that threw me off of thinking reductionism could take place is the fact that we cannot analytically solve any Schrödinger equation other than the one which represents the system of one proton and one electron -- the hydrogen system.
But the physical systems which comprise life are much more complicated than that system. We don't have analytic, logical access to that at this point in time in terms of scientific knowledge. So I think this thought is also causing some of my doubts.
I don't think it's that we observe physical laws. We use physics to explain what we observe. Do we really observe acts of volition? Or is volition a theory to explain observations? In other words, is there a clash of explanations when we try to reconcile decision making with physics? I would be one who says there's no bridge between the two.
Physics, especially when viewed as an all-encompassing body of explanations, is essentially a deterministic domain, right? The area of decision making is about identity (who makes the ATP? who shot down the balloon?) Decision making marks off the natural from the supernatural (per the literal meaning of that word.) And ultimately, it's the engine of emotion we call morality. I suspect that reduction is never going to happen here. Any attempt to reduce is going to give way to eliminativism. Do you agree with that?
Quoting Moliere
Yes. It's a bad time in history to be reductive because the foundation of physics is unfinished. We could make bridge laws to what we've got, only to find out tomorrow that it's all completely different from what we thought.
Quantum mechanics is the most accurate physical theory ever devised. What is at issue in all the interpretations is the meaning of the theory, not what it actually predicts will happen.
That itself is a matter in need of interpretation. What quantum mechanics predicts is probabilities, not what is actually the case. That's exactly the problem I discussed above. What is actually the case, is what is, right now, the zero point in time. And that's when uncertainty is maximum. So quantum mechanics can accurately predict the probabilities of what could happen if..., the odds of X, the odds of Y, etc.. But it's absolutely uncertain about what is happening right now, and that's why it needs the "if", because those are the temporal conditions which introduce degrees of certainty.
Well, I'm not familiar enough with our theories of consciousness to say. However, I tend towards the fundamentally basic objection that meaning can be reduced to neither physics nor physical processes. Consciousness is meaningful experience. Therefore, consciousness can be reduced to neither physics nor physical processes.
My position is that all meaning is a biproduct of thought and belief formation(drawing correlations/associations/connections between different things), and that that is a process which is existentially dependent upon and/or consists of physical and non-physical things. Therefore, thought and belief cannot be reduced to merely physics or physical things. Although, I do hold that meaning emerges from physical things, and as such it is existentially dependent upon physical things. I reject many if not most commonly employed conventional dichotomies used to talk about the subject matter.
Meaning is neither physical nor non physical, internal nor external, etc.
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting creativesoul
Consciousness is neither physical nor nonphysical? Are you saying ontology doesn't apply to consciousness?
You would assert that
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4
and that we need to look at the two-sidedness of reduction, needing to know both what we are reducing and what we are reducing to, and realizing that what we are reducing might be a better way to look at things even if it is reducible.
Would you say this is in conflict with my belief that we cannot know these statements? I'd say we cannot know that the most basic stuff of the world is physical, and we cannot know there is nothing else. But, simultaneously, I would say we don't need to know it either, and that knowledge of such things is beyond us.
Why?
I suppose it's because I don't know that it's the case, and I'm not sure what could even be a good reason to believe it. My argument would be from the multitude of beliefs about what reality fundamentally is: this sort of question has been answered in so many ways by intelligent people. Just look at philosophy! One reason I doubt any assertion about what reality fundamentally is is because people smarter than I have disagreed upon the subject. And they had their reasons, too. So why should I trust a belief just because I have a reason when they had their reasons, and yet we'd assert, today, that they were wrong?
One reason I can think of that I find persuasive is that there is some ethical justification for the belief. But, then, you can see why I'd assert that scientific knowledge does not lead to knowledge about the fundament. Instead, I'd say it's our activity which gets us closer to the fundament, but then as we interact with it the richness of being overflows our concepts. However, this is an encounter rather than a reason. I can't reason my way to the boundary of concepts -- I'd be staying within the concepts at that point. I have to grasp the world, and do so through my concepts, but in grasping it becomes a part of my projects, my desires, my way of manipulating the world: the elementality is brought under my categories of desire, converted into my hammer, my house, in which there is always a horizon, or, rather, an exteriority. But an exteriority is always exterior, and never brought under my grasp.
For Levinas I think it was clear that this lead to God. But I'm an atheist, and so what I see is the absurd: depending upon which project a person is pursuing, how they grasp the world, so the world appears. And if you take the time oftentimes you can sort of see where a person is coming from, yet you would never have thought the things you're thinking without the human relationship with a person who told you a new perspective.
So in the place of the absurd, I'd say there is still a face-to-face, and it is this which forms a materiality beyond our own self. It's the social which creates our ability to even speak of the physical, and so it is more fundamental, and yet due to the face-to-face, the Other's exteriority, we will also never know the totality of this materiality.
Rather than cannot know I would say we do not know. But methodologically reduction has been enormously successful. I take a pragmatic approach. We should not abandon reductionism, but we should be aware of its limits.
Quoting Moliere
This seems sensible to me. I am suspicious of any claim about what reality fundamentally is .
I am attracted to what the Daodejing says about
When I first heard this saying I thought it was the exact opposite of what Western philosophy was about, but I eventually came to see that is may be similar to Socrates wisdom - knowledge of ones ignorance. Knowing that one does not know.
In Plato's Laws the Athenian Stranger says:
.
Whatever we make of this we should keep in mind that the Athenian Stranger is being playful. He is not simply advocating fun and games but beautiful games. And, of course, this raised the question of what a beautiful game is. And this in turn requires asking the question of what the beautiful is.
Definitely going out on a limb here, but responding to your ending about the beautiful more than anything. Perhaps off topic from reductionism, and should be splintered off, but I'll see what you think. (I'm loving the exchange btw):
I sometimes wonder about the beautiful. Especially its relationship to the just. Justice was a concern of Plato, yet I question his commitment on the basis of owning slaves. This is clearly an anachronism, yet I don't think it an ethically inappropriate one. It's just one of those things which humans do (still today, I might add) that clearly isn't ethical.
I think, at times, the beautiful can seduce us away from the just. Not that it's bad -- but we are easily led away from the pursuit of justice. (tho I still think the beautiful very important. I'm no [s]aesthete[/s]ascetic)
Not that I blame people. In its pursuit, justice is almost inhuman -- or, at least, implementations of justice are inhuman.
So I can see wisdom in the beautiful games. And perhaps the beautiful games will lead us to something serious.
But justice still calls -- in a way if I wiled my time pursing beautiful games, I'd be forgetting the people I know who suffer: We will always need bronze souled people, and they ought to be comfortable and happy and know that their children will be OK because we are living a stable life together. When we let go of myth, we see that there are no hierarchies of souls, only different tasks to be done from different positions within the social organism.
I think with what I've said thus far I should say "we do not know", but I feel we cannot know. Just because of the sketch I already gave to say where my thinking is coming from. I know it needs work to establish the claim.
I agree that we should not abandon reductionism. I think we're on the same page in just trying to understand its limits, though perhaps disagree on our general assessment of where those limits are, or at least are expressing different sorts of notions on limits at the moment -- I'm sure we could come to understand one another.
Does this imply that an amended science could account for the mental? What could that amendment look like?
"volition" is too squishy to count as a theory, I think, unless we mean folk-theory. But then I'd be hesitant to use "observations".
I think what I'd say is that we're so ignorant we don't know if there is or is not a clash. So I agree with you in believing there's not a bridge between the two.
Quoting frank
I could argue the case elsewise, but I'm fine with dropping it too.
I think identity is a rich concept. I'm not following how decision making marks off the natural from the supernatural.
I'm interested in this idea of giving way to eliminativism. Not that you're wrong. However, sometimes a defense of reducitonism, as you noted, is that it does not lead to eliminativism.
So why is it that reductionism, when it comes to -- let's just say people? -- gives way to eliminativism?
Quoting frank
I think what I'd caution against is the idea that science has foundations that can be finished. At least, some very intelligent people have claimed to have found these foundations, and they don't all agree with one another.
The lense I understand science through is as a social activity. So supposing a unity between the general theory of relativity and quantum theory is widely accepted, since that's generally thought to be the foundational science, then what's stopping some smart guy in the future from pointing out a mistake or fudge or possibility -- which, given that it's a human activity, is inevitable -- just to make their mark?
I think that there will always be scientists who desire to be the foundation, and so further foundations shall be built.
Which isn't the same as to say it's false! I'm just uncertain about foundations.
It is wonderous! The Greek terms ????? and ?????? mean not only beautiful but fine, good, and noble.
Quoting Moliere
In the Symposium the love of wisdom is erotic. It can seduce us. Although Plato distinguished between the just. beautiful, and good, they are closely related.
Plato plays on descriptions of Socrates as ugly and beautiful.
In an attempt to bring this back to the thread topic, we should consider whether the beauty of nature is biologically significant. If we conclude it is, and I think we should, we have good reason to think reductionism does not tell us the whole story.
Those "shoulds" imply a moral obligation to the "truth" of Physics, as opposed to the "falsehoods" of Religion. The assertion of final authority for Empirical Physics was indeed the underlying ideology of Classical Physics since the 17th century. But the 20th century threw a monkey wrench of doubt (Quantum Uncertainty) into the works of that non-religious belief system .
The ancient & classical faith in an unbroken chain of causal Destiny was based on the unfounded assumption of Determinism -- by divine or physical Laws -- and "worked" for three centuries of empirical dominance. But confidence in that premise was shaken by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In response to quantum indeterminism, AlanTuring began to look into the plausibility of Free Will within the "boundary conditions" (established by the statistical Schrodinger equation) of quantum physics. Quantum scale "laws" are fuzzy, so future states are statistical, instead of deterministic.
The Aaronson article, mentioned before, reviews Turing's reasoning in some detail (85 pages). So, what do you think? In view of Quantum Holism & Uncertainty, should we continue to bow before the Physics idols of Atomism & Destiny? :smile:
Physics and Determinism and Reductionism :
[i]In honor of Alan Turings hundredth birthday, I unwisely set out some thoughts about one of
Turings obsessions throughout his life, the question of physics and free will. I focus relatively
narrowly on a notion that I call Knightian freedom: a certain kind of in-principle physical unpredictability that goes beyond probabilistic unpredictability. Other, more metaphysical aspects
of free will I regard as possibly outside the scope of science.
I examine a viewpoint, suggested independently by Carl Hoefer, Cristi Stoica, and even
Turing himself, that tries to find scope for freedom in the universes boundary conditions
rather than in the dynamical laws.[/i]
The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine ___Scott Aaronson
https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/giqtm3.pdf
Quote : "Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition. __Alan Turing
Differential = relationships between unknowns.
Boundary conditions = limitations on possibilites
Not at all. To quite the contrary, I'm saying that attempting to parse meaningful experience into either/or dichotomous language is a fatal flaw when that something consists of and is existentially dependent upon both. Thus, if I'm to be taken as saying anything at all about ontology, I'm saying that the historical and conventional ontological frameworks are fatally flawed in that they are inherently inadequate as a result of being incapable of taking meaningful experience into account.
In my opinion changes in theories due to the reductive approach show how epistemically efficient and useful this methodology is in describing the mechanisms of specific systems.
The second meaning of the term is more of a failed philosophical attempt to oversimplify the above "success story of science" but that has nothing to do with the goals of science or the emergent characteristics found in Nature.
I'm interested. The conflict I was attempting to bring out was roughly between mechanism and teleology, and the difficulties reduction has with this apparent conflict.
How does the conclusion that the beauty of nature is biologically significant lead to a belief in the limits of reductionism?
I think a good case can be made for biological teleology at the level of organisms. Cell differentiation allows for one kind of stuff, a totipotent cell, to become other kinds of stuff, all the other cells that make up the organism. It is purposeful in the sense that it functions toward an end, the living organism.
Quoting Moliere
The beauty of nature is manifest in appearance. The appearance is no longer present in reduction to something else.
Cool, so we're pretty close in conception it seems. Just coming at it from a different angle.
Quoting Fooloso4
OK, that makes sense now. Thanks!
You're probably right.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
I'm not familiar with complexity science. Do you know of a good resource?
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
One of the things I quickly noticed about this topic is that a person would really need to be a scientist to make any pronouncements, and scientists are usually busy doing other things.
Quoting Moliere
We know the amoeba made a decision because it's not just flowing along with the current. That's what volition is: going against wind, so to speak. Id like to do a thread on identity one day. Maybe after you're through with Marx
One cannot be through with Marx until human emancipation is achieved. :grin:
I guess my identity thread is a long way off then.
Hell yeah, sounds good to me.
:D
So we're similarly situated, but I'm still interested in the ideas and differences, and I'm going to keep it to reductionism now.
Your notion of reductionism appeals to the whole, which I am certainly more inclined towards -- the notion that understanding the whole and its parts and their respective relationships is a very appealing form of reductionism. I think what gets me are the discontinuities, which I've been attempting to point out with my various examples of theories. But that isn't to say I'm opposed to reductionism -- I'd just say that scientific theories are frequently independent of one another developed by their own particular group of people studying that problem or companies working on a product. There's a common theoretical core, but that common theoretical core isn't conceptual, it's cultural. It's a craft whereby one figures out how to reduce observations to theories, or vice versa. So I agree with this notion of a double-reductionism, between wholes and parts.
I think I'm just very uncertain about there being only one way of putting it all: where others see unity, I see multiplicities upon multiplicities, and I see no reason to believe science will be finished.
And, a problem with beginnings, as you noted in the reference to the Arche thread: We could re-interpret physics in terms of biology, saying that biology is the queen of the sciences -- how would you respond to this proposal? Would that still be the physical reduction that you're talking about?
I did not mean a double reductionism. The opposite ends of the spectrum are not opposite ends of reductionism. Reductionism is one end and holism at the other end.
Quoting Moliere
The discontinuities may be a matter of our lack of knowledge.
Quoting Moliere
For a long time science became increasingly specialized, but there has more recently been an increase in multidisciplinary approaches.
Quoting Moliere
I agree.
Quoting Moliere
I don't know what that would look like since much or the focus of physics is not on living organisms. But here is where multidisciplinary approaches come into play.
I first heard about it in a great book by Carolyn Merchant "Autonomous Nature - Problems of Prediction and Control from Ancient Times to the Scientific Revolution".
Theories like "Chaos Theory", Scientific Emergence, Quantum Biology, Mechanics, Chemistry and many methodologies that use statistical probabilities are part of Complexity Science.
https://complexityexplained.github.io/
Quoting frank
-You are correct. After all we can not do meaningful Philosophy without up to date Scientific Epistemology and we can not arrive to a Scientific Conclusion (theory) without Philosophizing about what the results of our research really mean.
Credible Scientific Epistemology is absolutely necessary for out theoretical foundations even for Philosophical questions of Meaning and Value, questions that we can not do science to answer them.
That sounds fascinating. Thanks!
Sorry. I'm filling in gaps where I ought to be asking questions.
I'll just ask an open one: what is the spectrum between reductionism and holism? Are these two methods, or what?
Quoting Fooloso4
I agree they may be. My feeling on what will happen is based on what seems to be -- which perhaps qualifies this as a myth too, now that I think on it.
While I can acknowledge the possibility, my report remains the same -- it's the discontinuities which make me feel doubt, at least in my rationalist story.
Quoting Fooloso4
True. And it's super interesting stuff. I love these approaches.
I think the way my view of science would accommodate that would be similar to artistic movements through history -- there are practitioners who, after upon developing their craft, get to push the boundaries of where things have been.
Just as the artists had to follow certain rules, so do the scientists. The specifics of those rules make each craft what it is. Science as a human craft where we produce knowledge, now that we have a sufficiently rich economy.
With that picture in mind --and it is only a picture -- it's hard for me to believe in a reductionism to the whatevers of physics that we invent in the future. (and this goes back to my picture of science as a social practice which will, by being a social practice, always change rather than arrive at a final picture)
Quoting Fooloso4
Hrm! I am surprised. How do you make sense of the multiplicity while retaining reductionism as you've laid it out so far?
Quoting Fooloso4
I think if we begin with the notion that biology is the queen of the sciences, not in terms of logical relations between the extensions of terms, but in terms of what a science looks like when it's been perfected -- then that's how you'd begin to pick apart the physical sciences.
In a way this almost relates to the OP, because I'm making the argument from success of the sciences -- but saying biology is very successful, and so a candidate for reduction.
The spectrum is the subatomic to the cosmological, but much in biology focuses between the molecular or cellular on one end to the living organism and its environment on the other. Many methods.
Quoting Moliere
Well, we should not mistake an incomplete story for sufficient one.
Quoting Moliere
Rather than follow the rules cutting edge science establishes them.
Quoting Moliere
I'm sitting in the peanut gallery. I take a pragmatic view. Reductionism in science has been and continues to be successful. That seems to be where most of the attention goes, but not all of it. Some scientists are more interested in larger scale views. If's not a question of one or the other but of what works.
Quoting Moliere
I'm not sure what you mean by a candidate for reduction. Much of biology is already reductive - genetics, DNA, genomes, biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics, But systems science is non-reductive, it is dynamic and integrative.
Isn't that the same for the artists?
Quoting Fooloso4
Fair.
I'm nowhere near the foundations. I just do my lab job, while thinking my little thoughts. Philosophically the one thing that grounds my wonderings is I'm actually thinking about this stuff in terms of what I ought believe. But in a speculative sense, at least. (since, as you can see, I entertain some odd beliefs)
I agree that it's a question of what works -- I think that's what I mean by multiplicity, at least in part. What works is relative to some project, as far as I can tell.
So a plumber knows what makes a pipe work. There's a reason for the pipe, there is knowledge associated with plumbing which is technical enough to require training.
Of course no one thinks plumbing is the fundament.
But in what way is science's "what works" different such that we should pay attention to it for the purposes of thinking about the fundament?
Quoting Fooloso4
That's interesting. I mean, I agree with the beginning part but I'm curious what you count as non-reductive science.
If you will allow a guess now that you've explained what you mean by between the poles: reduction is the downward motion towards particulars, and holism is the upward motion towards universals. Or, in terms of particular sciences, reductionism is from biological entities' functions to physical forces, and holism is from the whole (whatever that may be) in order to understand the particulars. (I think, in my mind, I think about going back and forth here between wholes and particulars to "check" the relations between ideas, so that's why I filled in as I did before).
Or am I wrong?
Yes, I think so. This is clearly seen in the case of jazz. The innovators made the rules that those who came after them learned and followed. But the innovators did not make the rules in the sense of first making them and then playing according to them. They played and those who studied them codified them.
Quoting Moliere
My wife is a PhD biochemist, but has no interest in such discussions. She is interested in how things actually work, in finding answers. My son, on the other hand, is in the lab and enjoys these kinds of discussion.
Quoting Moliere
Systems science. Morphology. Zoology. Environmental sciences.
Quoting Moliere
Not exactly. The study of animals is the study of particulars. A horse or a dog is a particular thing. It is not a matter of universals but of organisms.
So the innovators don't make rules at all. They just play. The ones wo study the innovators are the ones who make the rules.
There is much more to it than that.
Are they following rules when they play then?
I interpret your second question to be asking "can" sciences be reduced? I think the answer to that is yes.
How, precisely, would you define reductionism?
Isn't that already the case ontologically? We know that chemical laws boil down to physical laws, and that biology ultimately goes down to chemistry. We don't use physics to study biology because biological systems are too complex to track each molecular interaction (methodology), but nonetheless we are aware that, physically, biological phenomenons are derived from physics.
'The physics department!' he says, throwing his hands up in the air. 'They always want such enormous amounts of money! Big pieces of equipment, special buildings, all kinds of stuff.
"Why can't they be more like the English Department? All they want is books, and stationary, and wastepaper bins.
"Or the math department. They don't even want the bins."
Not true. Housekeeper of a famous mathematician asked what the mathematician does. Answer after deliberation: "He scribbles on paper, then scowls and wads it and throws it in the wastebasket".
I guess the guy that told it to me wasn't a mathematician.
Oh contraire mon frère, this is more something we [I]thought[/I] we knew at the high point of reductionism. The case for this is now more difficult. IMO, it would be foolish to assume reductionism as a given until it is decisively disproved, since reductionism itself was never been decisively proved in the first place. Reductionism trades off millennia old intuitions and philosophical arguments, and this might be grounds for dismissing it as much as supporting it. That is, it is arguably something that has been so popular for so long (since the pre-Socratics) only because it is intuitive, "neat and tidy." But our intuitions often seem to lead us astray, so this might be a knock on the idea as much as support for it.
There are generally two big responses to save reduction. One is that we just lack the computational abilities to get to the reduction. I am sympathetic to this one. However, it is a problem that this is an argument advanced for almost all cases of apparent emergence, and has been for decades. But since the 1980s computational capabilities have exploded. How far must they advance before this idea loses currency? In theory, you could make this argument no matter how far computational abilities advance. However, we'd then have to ask, "does every last molecule require these vast computational resources to do its thing? How does that work?" This is the intuition that leads pancomputationalist physicists to be surprisingly friendly to the idea of strong emergence. There doesn't seem to be any physical "stuff" that could accommodate this amount of computation.
The second argument goes like this. Most chemists, and most scientists are physicalists. Core ideas in physicalism, particularly superveniance and causal closure, seem to make emergence quite impossible. I am less hot on this one. It seems to be having the cart drive the horse.
You bring up a good point, but rather than swing between supporting or dismissing, why not simply recognize the need for a more complex and nuanced view?
To put that in my own words, I would say "reductionism" is ill-defined. Perhaps a properly defined reductionism may not be at odds with emergentism at all.
I would think we would have to reach more definitive conclusion as to the quantum foundation of nature to have much hope of being free from fuzzy boundary issues between quantum views and classical views. In any case reductionism and weak emergentism work very well at scales where quantum effects can be treated as just noise.
Really not sure what they mean by this.
That is interesting for sure. I am also sympathetic to it and it is something I tried to express when I brought up biology. I mean, what else is there? If the visible universe is made of matter and the four forces, it follows that material things would behave based fundamentally on the most fundamental laws of physics, describing that matter and its four fources, otherwise we have laws surfacing ex nihilo.
As a side note, despite the SEP being the highest reference for general philosophy in the West, I don't trust them when it comes to science. Their articles that involve anthropology, for example, are full of perceived consensuses that don't actually exist.
The Three Body Problem (which BTW, is the title of a great SciFi book) at least suggests that the problem goes much deeper than availability of computational resources:
For things to change, it means they become something they are not. But that means what we really have is a case where things that are cease to be and new things come into being. Which means you have to either deny real change (neo-eleatic positions, eternalism) or recognize that new things coming into being and existing things ceasing to be is downright fundemental.
What offends us about strong emergence then isn't the "something from nothing," but the difficulties of abstracting flux and process into some sort of static equation we can point to and say "this is the real [I]thing[/I]! This equation describes all that apparent change, but there isn't really change, there is just this one thing." If there is strong emergence, then by definition you're not going to be able to get that.
As I mentioned in the "What is Computation?" question a while back, this certainly goes into how computation is viewed. Often its necessarily step-wise, processual nature is glossed over, with the idea that it is the eternal relations it elucidates that are fundemental, the process just an accident. But looking at the physical basis of computation would suggest exactly the opposite, that process is fundemental and such "eternal relations" are merely instantiated through them.