In this chapter, I defend a pluralistic approach to intertheoretic reduction, in which reduction is not understood in terms of a single philosophical “generalized model”, but rather as a family of models that can help achieve certain epistemic and ontological goals. I will argue then that the reductive model (or combination of models) that best suits to a particular case study depends on the specific goals that motivate the reduction in the intended case study.

Intertheoretic relations are an important topic in the philosophy of science. However, since their classical discussion by Ernest Nagel, such relations have mostly been restricted to relations between pairs of theories in the natural sciences. This paper presents a case study of a new type of intertheoretic relation that is inspired by Montague’s analysis of the linguistic syntax-semantics relation. The paper develops a simple model of this relation. To motivate the adoption of our new model, we show that (...) this model extends the scope of application of the Nagelian models and that it shares the epistemological advantages of the Nagelian model. The latter is achieved in a Bayesian framework. (shrink)

The question of whether all living things are really just complex physical ones, or whether instead there are biological entities or characteristics that cannot be fully characterized in physical terms, has historical roots buried centuries deep. Carl Hempel considers this question as an empirical one for modern science to address. Hempel’s concern is not with the answer to the question, but rather with the methods by which it may be evaluated. He considers the position of those he calls “mechanists,” that (...) all living things and their biological characteristics are nothing more than complex physical systems, as equivalent to the view that in some significant sense all accurate biological theories are implied by physical ones. In so doing, Hempel seeks to draw conclusions regarding the unity of science more broadly. This paper argues that Hempel’s account, though perhaps succeeding in a crucial first step, fails on numerous points afterwards. Using the morals that may be draw from these failures, I suggest rough outlines of some alternative accounts of intertheoretic reduction. (shrink)

I analyze the extent to which classical phase transitions, both first order and continuous, pose a challenge for intertheoretic reduction. My contention is that phase transitions are compatible with a notion of reduction that combines Nagelian reduction and what Thomas Nickles called Reduction2. I also argue that, even if the same approach to reduction applies to both types of phase transitions, there is a crucial difference in their physical treatment: in addition to the thermodynamic limit, (...) in continuous phase transitions there is a second infinite limit involved, which marks an important difference in the reduction of first-order and continuous phase transitions. (shrink)

The argument from multiple realization is currently considered the argument against intertheoretic reduction. Both Little and Kincaid have applied the argument to the individualism-holism debate in support of the antireductionist holist position. The author shows that the tenability of the argument, as applied to the individualism-holism debate, hinges on the descriptive constraints imposed on the individualist position. On a plausible formulation of the individualist position, the argument does not establish that the intertheoretic reduction of social theories (...) is highly unlikely. Nonetheless, the reductive project may run into other potential obstacles. For this reason, it is concluded that the prospect of intertheoretic reduction is uncertain rather than unlikely. Key Words: argument from multiple realization • intertheoretic reduction • reductionism • individualism • holism. (shrink)

This paper proposes a classification of the intertheoretic relations in physics by bringing out the conditions for a relation of reduction which is eliminative, so that a theory reduced in terms of reductionism is superfluous in principle, and by distinguishing such a relation from another one based on comparison, which will be called neighbourhood of theories; the latter is a neighbouring relation between theories and is not able to support claims of eliminative reductionism. In the first part, it (...) will be argued that this differentiation between neighbourhood and eliminative reduction permits an adequate classification of the intertheoretic relations in physics. By means of this differentiation, the second part discusses reductionism and shows that there are indeed some historical examples of reduction in the aforementioned sense, but that modern physical theories are typically only neighbouring. (shrink)

I argue that there are good reasons to assume that Quine’s theory of reference and ontology is incompatible with reductive statements – such as ‘Heat is molecular motion’ or ‘Rabbits are conglomerations of cells’. Apparently, reductive statements imply certain intertheoretical identities, yet Quine’s theory of reference and ontology seems incompatible with intertheoretical identities. I argued that treating, for the sake of reconciliation, reductive statements along the lines of Quine’s theory of an ontological reduction (which does not imply intertheoretical identity) (...) fails. Then I discussed two alternative strategies on behalf of Quine to handle reductive statements: the Holistic Strategy (which appeals to Quine’s notion of an all-encompassing background theory) and the Individuative Strategy (which draws on Quine’s notion of an apparatus of individuation). I argue that the Individuative Strategy promises to succeed. However, the Individuative Strategy obliges to revising Quine’s theory of an ontological reduction – a revision that, as I argue, can and should be implemented. (shrink)

A recurrent candidate for exemplification of intertheoretic reduction, put forward over past decades within philosophy of science, is the proposition "pitch is identical with sound-frequency." Paul Churchland revives this nominal ontological reduction, placing it beside others as "lightning is an electrical discharge," and "heat is high kinetic energy." Yet no matter whether frequency is considered physically or merely semantically, there is no conceivable format in which such an identity is viable. An analysis of objective qualia said to (...) represent the ground of such equations indicates their fictitious existence, save as misidentified percepts. The criterion of logical identity cannot bridge sensory and stimulus field divisions of perception, hence Churchland's objective qualia, said to straddle both fields, cannot furnish an intelligible or sound basis for identification. Naive realism and its intellectualization as direct realism are shown to be at bottom of confoundment of these fields, generating pseudo-problems involving the putative nature and localization of qualia. These conclusions collectively would then disallow the usual attempts to extrapolate from such fictive identities to a further positing of mind-brain identity, by analogy therewith. It is suggested that the method employed in refutation of "pitch is frequency" may have a more general application. The misemployment of the concept and method of intertheoretical identification in connection with phenomenological experience and science of perception is made explicit. (shrink)

Philosophers of science since Nagel have been interested in the links between intertheoretic reduction and explanation, understanding and other forms of epistemic progress. Although intertheoretic reduction is widely agreed to occur in pure mathematics as well as empirical science, the relationship between reduction and explanation in the mathematical setting has rarely been investigated in a similarly serious way. This paper examines an important particular case: the reduction of arithmetic to set theory. I claim that (...) the reduction is unexplanatory. In defense of this claim, I offer evidence from mathematical practice, and I respond to contrary suggestions due to Steinhart, Maddy, Kitcher and Quine. I then show how, even if set-theoretic reductions are generally not explanatory, set theory can nevertheless serve as a legitimate foundation for mathematics. Finally, some implications of my thesis for philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science are discussed. In particular, I suggest that some reductions in mathematics are probably explanatory, and I propose that differing standards of theory acceptance might account for the apparent lack of unexplanatory reductions in the empirical sciences. (shrink)

Synchronic intertheoretic reductions are an important field of research in science. Arguably, the best model able to represent the main relations occurring in this kind of scientific reduction is the Nagelian account of reduction, a model further developed by Schaffner and nowadays known as the generalized version of the Nagel–Schaffner model. In their article, Dizadji-Bahmani, Frigg, and Hartmann specified the two main desiderata of a reduction á la GNS: confirmation and coherence. DFH first and, more rigorously, (...) Tešic later analyse the confirmatory relation between the reducing and the reduced theory in terms of Bayesian confirmation theory. The purpose of this article is to analyse and compare the degree of coherence between the two theories involved in the GNS before and after the reduction. For this reason, in the first section, I will be looking at the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics and use it as an example to describe the GNS. In the second section, I will introduce three coherence measures which will then be employed in the comparison. Finally, in the last two sections, I will compare the degrees of coherence between the reducing and the reduced theory before and after the reduction and use a few numerical examples to understand the relation between coherence and confirmation measures. (shrink)

Intertheoretic reduction in physics aspires to be both to be explanatory and perfectly general: it endeavors to explain why an older, simpler theory continues to be as successful as it is in terms of a newer, more sophisticated theory, and it aims to relate or otherwise account for as many features of the two theories as possible. Despite often being introduced as straightforward cases of intertheoretic reduction, candidate accounts of the reduction of general relativity to (...) Newtonian gravitation have either been insufficiently general or rigorous, or have not clearly been able to explain the empirical success of Newtonian gravitation. Building on work by Ehlers and others, I propose a different account of the reduction relation that is perfectly general and meets the explanatory demand one would make of it. In doing so, I highlight the role that a topology on the collection of all spacetimes plays in defining the relation, and how the selection of the topology corresponds with broader or narrower classes of observables that one demands be well-approximated in the limit. (shrink)

This paper addresses a relatively common scientific (as opposed to philosophical) conception of intertheoretic reduction between physical theories. This is the sense of reduction in which one (typically newer and more refined) theory is said to reduce to another (typically older and coarser) theory in the limit as some small parameter tends to zero. Three examples of such reductions are discussed: First, the reduction of Special Relativity (SR) to Newtonian Mechanics (NM) as (v/c)20; second, the (...) class='Hi'>reduction of wave optics to geometrical optics as 0; and third, the reduction of Quantum Mechanics (QM) to Classical Mechanics (CM) as0. I argue for the following two claims. First, the case of SR reducing to NM is an instance of a genuine reductive relationship while the latter two cases are not. The reason for this concerns the nature of the limiting relationships between the theory pairs. In the SR/NM case, it is possible to consider SR as a regular perturbation of NM; whereas in the cases of wave and geometrical optics and QM/CM, the perturbation problem is singular. The second claim I wish to support is that as a result of the singular nature of the limits between these theory pairs, it is reasonable to maintain that third theories exist describing the asymptotic limiting domains. In the optics case, such a theory has been called catastrophe optics. In the QM/CM case, it is semiclassical mechanics. Aspects of both theories are discussed in some detail. (shrink)

Merely approximate symmetry is mundane enough in physics that one rarely finds any explication of it. Among philosophers it has also received scant attention compared to exact symmetries. Herein I invite further consideration of this concept that is so essential to the practice of physics and interpretation of physical theory. After motivating why it deserves such scrutiny, I propose a minimal definition of approximate symmetry—that is, one that presupposes as little structure on a physical theory to which it is applied (...) as seems needed. Then I apply this definition to three topics: first, accounting for or explaining the symmetries of a theory emeritus in intertheoretic reduction; second, explicating and evaluating the Curie-Post principle; and third, a new account of accidental symmetry. (shrink)

This Element offers an overview of some of the most important debates in philosophy and physics around the topics of emergence and reduction and proposes a compatibilist view of emergence and reduction. In particular, it suggests that specific notions of emergence, which the author calls 'few-many emergence' and 'coarse-grained emergence', are compatible with 'intertheoretic reduction'. Some further issues that will be addressed concern the comparison between parts-whole emergence and few-many emergence, the emergence of effective theories, the (...) use of infinite limits, the notion of intertheoretic reduction and the explanation of universal and cooperative behavior. Although the focus will be principally on classical phase transitions and other examples from condensed matter physics, the main aim is to draw some general conclusions on the topics of emergence and reduction that can help us understand a variety of case-studies ranging from high-energy physics to astrophysics. (shrink)

The historical development of debates about reduction testifies to us that reductionism in biology must proceed by providing a precise and complete causal explanation for every biological phenomenon at the level of molecules. An intertheoretical reduction model was proposed in biology but proved unsuccessful due to its inability to accommodate and explain the success of molecular biology. Ever since the molecular structure of the gene was discovered, actual biological research has successfully generated explanations for complex biological facts in (...) terms of the predicates of molecular biology. Biological phenomena, which classical functional biology explains only with limited powers, are more accurately described and comprehensively explained as the reduction processes advance with molecular biology. It is clear that the reductionist research program of molecular biology is the best account of success and progress in biology. (shrink)

Ontology should be conceived as supervenient on scientific theories. They tell us what categories of things there really are. Thus, we would have a unique system of ontology if we would attain the unity of science through a reductionist program. For this, it should be clear how a relation of intertheoretical reduction (with ontological implications) is to be conceived. A formal proposal is laid out in this paper. This allows us also to define the notion of a fundamental theory. (...) Now, it appears that, considering the state of really existing science, the idea of reductionism as based on this explication is highly implausible. However, even if this is the case, the question whether it is possible to build up a unique ontological system remains open. Its resolution depends on the notion of compatibility between fundamental theories, and its application to existing theories and their empirical bases. (shrink)

University Abstract Philosophers have sought to improve upon the logical empiricists’ model of scientific reduction. While opportunities for integration between the cognitive and the neural sciences have increased, most philosophers, appealing to the multiple realizability of mental states and the irreducibility of consciousness, object to psychoneural reduction. New Wave reductionists offer a continuum of comparative goodness of intertheoretic mapping for assessing reductions. Their insistence on a unified view of intertheoretic relations obscures epistemically significant crossscientific relations and (...) engenders dismissive conclusions about psychology. Richer, more sensitive accounts of explanatory pluralism and mechanistic explanation in science advocate multi-level approaches in cross-scientific settings and criticize the distance of the standard philosophical objections from working scientists’ practices and discoveries. The Heuristic Identity Theory, a new, scientifically informed version of the psycho-physical identity theory, incorporates these insights, showing how multiple realizability is an argument for (not against) identities in science and why, therefore, consciousness is not irreducible. (shrink)

Unlike the overall framework of Ernest Nagel's work on reduction, his theory of intertheoretic connection still has life in it. It handles aptly cases where reduction requires complex representation of a target domain. Abandoning his formulation as too liberal was a mistake. Arguments that it is too liberal at best touch only Nagel's deductivist theory of explanation, not his condition of connectability. Taking this condition seriously gives a powerful view of reduction, but one which requires us (...) to index explanatory power to sciences as they are formulated at particular times. While we may thereby reduce more than philosophers have supposed, we must abandon hope (as Nagel did) of saying anything useful about reductionism. (shrink)

Intertheoretic relations are an important topic in the philosophy of science. However, since their classical discussion by Ernest Nagel, such relations have mostly been restricted to relations between pairs of theories in the natural sciences. In this paper, we present a model of a new type of intertheoretic relation, called 'Montague Reduction', which is assumed in Montague's framework for the analysis and interpretation of natural language syntax. To motivate the adoption of our new model, we show that (...) this model extends the scope of application of the Nagelian (or related) models, and that it shares the epistemological advantages of the Nagelian model. The latter is achieved in a Bayesian framework. (shrink)

In this article we critically evaluate Robin Le Poidevin's recent attempt to set out an argument for the ontological reduction of chemistry independently of intertheoretic reduction. We argue, firstly, that the argument he envisages applies only to a small part of chemistry, and that there is no obvious way to extend it. We argue, secondly, that the argument cannot establish the reduction of chemistry, properly so called.

We reconsider the Nagelian theory of reduction and argue that, contrary to a widely held view, it is the right analysis of intertheoretic reduction. The alleged difficulties of the theory either vanish upon closer inspection or turn out to be substantive philosophical questions rather than knock-down arguments.

Various claims regarding intertheoretic reduction, weak and strong notions of emergence, and explanatory fictions have been made in the context of first-order thermodynamic phase transitions. By appealing to John Norton’s recent distinction between approximation and idealization, I argue that the case study of anyons and fractional statistics, which has received little attention in the philosophy of science literature, is more hospitable to such claims. In doing so, I also identify three novel roles that explanatory fictions fulfill in science. (...) Furthermore, I scrutinize the claim that anyons, as they are ostensibly manifested in the fractional quantum Hall effect, are emergent entities and urge caution. Consequently, it is suggested that a particular notion of strong emergence signals the need for the development of novel physical–mathematical research programs. (shrink)

The structuralist program has developed a useful metascientific resource: ontological reductive links (ORLs) between the constituents of the potential models of reduced and reducing theories. This resource was developed initially to overcome an objection to structuralist ``global'' accounts of the intertheoretic reduction relation. But it also illuminates the way that concepts at a higher level of scientific investigation (e.g., cognitive psychology) become ``structured through reduction'' to lower-level investigations (e.g., cellular/molecular neuroscience). After (briefly) explaining this structuralist background, I (...) demonstrate how this resource illuminates an actual, emerging scientific example: the link between the psychological concept of a ``consolidation switch'' from short-term to long-term memory and the cellular/molecular mechanisms of the transition from early- to late-phases of long-term potentiation (LTP) (an important type of synaptic plasticity in mammalian hippocampus and cortex). (shrink)

What is the role of bridge laws in inter-theoretic relations? An assumption shared by many views about these relations is that bridge laws enable reductions. In this article, I acknowledge the naturalness of this assumption, but I question it by presenting a context within thermal physics (involving phase transitions) in which the bridge laws, puzzlingly, seem to contribute to blocking the reduction.

The Three Papers comprising this series, together with my earlier [34] also published in this journal, constitute an attempt to set out the major issues in the theoretical domain of reduction and to develop a general theory of theory reduction. The fourth paper, [34], though published separately from this trio, is integral to the presentation and should be read in conjunction with these papers. Even so, the presentation is limited in scope – roughly, to intertheoretic reduction (...) among empirical theories – and informal in presentation – not least because a satisfying formal account of theories has yet to be offered. And despite the length, the treatment is still condensed; often corroborating and/or intuitively helpful detail has had to be consigned to footnotes or omitted. I approach the problem from within my own naturalistic realist philosophy of science and formal analysis of abstract hierarchy in theory. The sources for the former are [25], [29], [31], and [32] and those for the latter essentially [27] and [30]. Hierarchical notions played a significant role in the already published [34]. (shrink)

Chapter V attempts to provide the elements of a solution to the problem of how terms in theoretical sciences acquire their reference. Its proposal is that a theory of reference-acquisition for theoretical terms should acknowledge the fact that what fixes the reference of a theoretical term is typically the embedding theory as a whole, not an austere causal description like 'the item causally responsible for event E.' It is argued that there are epistemic reasons for the existence of this phenomenon, (...) and an attempt is made to show how, by appealing to these reasons, it is nonetheless possible to understand the reference-determining role of theories in such a way that occurrences of a term embedded in incompatible theoretical frameworks can often be interpreted as co-referential. ;Chapter IV is an interlude. It argues for the relevance of the theory of reference to the topic of intertheoretic reduction. It does this by attempting to demonstrate that intertheoretic reduction in the natural sciences requires intertheoretic identities involving theoretical terms, and that making sense of such identities demands a theory of reference-acquisition for theoretical terms. The chapter also argues that the problem of how mathematical terms secure their reference precludes an obvious extension of this model to examples of reduction in mathematics. It further criticizes attempts to make sense of mathematical reductions in terms of concepts of ontological reduction, and it suggests that much recent work on ontological reduction, especially the attempt to exclude all-out 'Pythagorean' reductions, is flawed through its failure to take referential semantics seriously. ;Chapter II contains exposition and criticism of both the descriptivist account of reference and Kripke's version of the 'causal' account of reference. The latter account is represented as a recursive account, with a base clause specifying how terms initially acquire their reference and a recursion clause specifying how the ability to use a term with a certain reference is transmitted to other users . It is argued that the Kripkean formulation of referential intentions at the reference-transmission stage is flawed, in part because the formulation makes his account unable to capture the dynamics of the way in which a person's use of a term may undergo reference-shifts without these shifts in reference being intended. ;The third chapter suggests an alternative account. It motivates and sketches a mixed causal-descriptivist theory speaker's reference, formulated in terms of first-order referential intentions, and then uses this theory to sketch aspects of a mixed causal-descriptivist account of term reference, formulated in terms of second-order intentions to intend the 'right' object . It is argued that such an account provides a plausible solution to a number of problems confronting Kripke's account, including that of unintended reference-shifts. ;This dissertation consists of five chapters whose unifying theme is the theory of term-reference. The first chapter offers an overview and critical comparison of two opposing approaches to the topic of reference: the semantic holism of Quine-Davidson, and the semantic atomism of those who treat reference as a relation that grounds the assignment of truth-conditions to sentences. The chapter argues that the apparent theoretical importance of referential intentions, emphasised in Saul Kripke's work on reference and argued for in detail in chapter III of the dissertation, provides strong support for semantic atomism, since such intentions are used to explain reference-assignments and, indirectly, truth-conditions. (shrink)

In their 2010 paper, Dizadji-Bahmani, Frigg, and Hartmann argue that the generalized version of the Nagel–Schaffner model that they have developed is the right one for intertheoretic reduction, i.e. the kind of reduction that involves theories with largely overlapping domains of application. Drawing on the GNS, DFH presented a Bayesian analysis of the confirmatory relation between the reducing theory and the reduced theory and argued that, post-reduction, evidence confirming the reducing theory also confirms the reduced theory (...) and evidence confirming the reduced theory also confirms the reducing theory, which meets the expectations one has about theories with largely overlapping domains. In this paper, I argue that the Bayesian analysis presented by DFH faces difficulties. In particular, I argue that the conditional probabilities that DFH introduce to model the bridge law entail consequences that run against the GNS. However, I also argue that, given slight modifications of the analysis that are in agreement with the GNS, one is able to account for these difficulties and, moreover, one is able to more rigorously analyse the confirmatory relation between the reducing and the reduced theory. (shrink)

Structuralism provides useful resources for advancing our understanding of the intertheoretic reduction relation and its place in the history of science. This paper begins by surveying these resources and assessing their metascientific significance. Nevertheless, important challenges remain. I close by arguing that the reductionism implicit in current scientific practice in a paradigmatic reductionistic scientific field –“molecular and cellular cognition”– is better understood on an “intervene and track” model rather than as any kind of intertheoretic relation. I illustrate (...) my alternative model by describing briefly a recent reductionistic result from the field. It appears doubtful that any structuralist resources will illuminate this newly-recognized type of reduction-in-actual-scientific-practice. (shrink)

Arguments, claims, and discussions about the “level of description” of a theory are ubiquitous in cognitive science. Such talk is typically expressed more precisely in terms of the granularity of the theory, or in terms of Marr’s three levels. I argue that these ways of understanding levels of description are insufficient to capture the range of different types of theoretical commitments that one can have in cognitive science. When we understand these commitments as points in a multi-dimensional space, we find (...) that we must also reconsider our understanding of intertheoretic relations. In particular, we should understand cognitive theories as constraining one another, rather than reducing to one another. (shrink)

I contrast Bickle's new wave reductionismwith other relevant views about explanation across intertheoretic contexts. I then assess Bickle's empirical argument for psychoneural reduction. Bickle shows that psychology is not autonomous from neuroscience, and concludes that at least some versions of nonreductive physicalism are false. I argue this is not sufficient to establish his further claim that psychology reduces to neuroscience. Examination of Bickle's explanations reveals that they do not meet his own reductive standard. Furthermore, there are good empirical (...) reasons to doubt that the cognitive approach to mind should be abandoned. I suggest that the near future will not see a reduction of psychology to neuroscience, so much as a replacement of both sciences by an improved form of neuropsychology. (shrink)

Courtesy of its free energy formulation, the hierarchical predictive processing theory of the brain (PTB) is often claimed to be a grand unifying theory. To test this claim, we examine a central case: activity of mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic (DA) systems. After reviewing the three most prominent hypotheses of DA activity—the anhedonia, incentive salience, and reward prediction error hypotheses—we conclude that the evidence currently vindicates explanatory pluralism. This vindication implies that the grand unifying claims of advocates of PTB are unwarranted. More generally, (...) we suggest that the form of scientific progress in the cognitive sciences is unlikely to be a single overarching grand unifying theory. (shrink)

*[Intertheoretic Reduction]: ___ When a new and very powerful theory turns out to entail a set of propositions and principles that mirror perfectly the propositions of some older theory or conceptual framework, we can conclude that the old terms and the new terms refer to the very same thing, or express the very same properties. (e.g. heat = high average molecular kinetic energy) The old theory is then said to be "reducible" to the new theory.

Classical accounts of intertheoretic reduction involve two pieces: first, the new terms of the higher-level theory must be definable from the terms of the lower-level theory, and second, the claims of the higher-level theory must be deducible from the lower-level theory along with these definitions. The status of each of these pieces becomes controversial when the alleged reduction involves an infinite limit, as in statistical mechanics. Can one define features of or deduce the behavior of an infinite (...) idealized system from a theory describing only finite systems? In this paper, I change the subject in order to consider the motivations behind the definability and deducibility requirements. The classical accounts of intertheoretic reduction are appealing because when the definability and deducibility requirements are satisfied there is a sense in which the reduced theory is forced upon us by the reducing theory and the reduced theory contains no more information or structure than the reducing theory. I will show that, likewise, there is a precise sense in which in statistical mechanics the properties of infinite limiting systems are forced upon us by the properties of finite systems, and the properties of infinite systems contain no information beyond the properties of finite systems. (shrink)

Classical accounts of intertheoretic reduction involve two pieces: first, the new terms of the higher-level theory must be definable from the terms of the lower-level theory, and second, the claims of the higher-level theory must be deducible from the lower-level theory along with these definitions. The status of each of these pieces becomes controversial when the alleged reduction involves an infinite limit, as in statistical mechanics. Can one define features of or deduce the behavior of an infinite (...) idealized system from a theory describing only finite systems? In this paper, I change the subject in order to consider the motivations behind the definability and deducibility requirements. The classical accounts of intertheoretic reduction are appealing because when the definability and deducibility requirements are satisfied there is a sense in which the reduced theory is forced upon us by the reducing theory and the reduced theory contains no more information or structure than the reducing theory. I will show that, likewise, there is a precise sense in which in statistical mechanics the properties of infinite limiting systems are forced upon us by the properties of finite systems, and the properties of infinite systems contain no information beyond the properties of finite systems. (shrink)

How should ‘the physical’ be defined for the purpose of formulating physicalism? In this paper I defend a version of the via negativa according to which a property is physical just in case it is neither fundamentally mental nor possibly realized by a fundamentally mental property. The guiding idea is that physicalism requires functionalism, and thus that being a type identity theorist requires being a realizer-functionalist. In §1 I motivate my approach partly by arguing against Jessica Wilson's no fundamental mentality (...) constraint. In §2 I set out my preferred definition of ‘the physical’ and make my case that physicalism requires functionalism. In §3 I defend my proposal by attacking the leading alternative account of ‘the physical,’ the theory-based conception. Finally, in §4 I draw on my definition, together with Jaegwon Kim's account of intertheoretic reduction, to defend the controversial view that physicalism requires a priori physicalism. (shrink)

Theory Reduction in the Social Sciences. The example of balance theories. A central topic both in philosophy of science as well as in the empirical sciences is the reconstruction of the relations between theories. In the past comparisons of theories by means of traditional linguistic methods have proved to be extremely difficult and complicated. In this article the reconstruction of intertheoretical relations based on model-theoretical terms is propagated, as formulated within the structuralist view of theories. The efficiency of a (...) model theoretical based comparison of theories is demonstrated by two theory elements from the social science research program of balance theories: The basic element by Heider and the transitivity theory by Holland and Leinhardt. First of all both theory elements are introduced informally and reconstructed in the structuralist format. On the basis of these reconstructions can be shown, that the Heider theory can be formally reduced to the Holland-Leinhardt theory and that the theory younger in history means an improvement. However, an integration of all balance theoretical elements into a theory net is not possible. (shrink)