Reductionism

One important aspect of biological explanation is detailed causal modeling of particular phenomena in limited experimental background conditions. Recognising this allows a new avenue for intertheoretic reduction to be seen. Reductions in biology are possible, when one fully recognises that a sufficient condition for a reduction in biology is a molecular model of 1) only the demonstrated causal parameters of a biological model and 2) only within a replicable experimental background. These intertheoretic identifications –which are ubiquitous in biology and form (...) the basis of ruthless reductions (Bickle 2003)- are criticised as merely “local” (Sullivan 2009) or “fragmentary” (Schaffner 2006). However, in an instructive case, a biological model is preserved in molecular terms, and a complex biological phenomenon has been successfully reduced. In doing this the molecular model remains valid in a broader range of background conditions and meaningfully unites disparate biological phenomena. (shrink)

In the first part of this article we will formulate postulates, which must be satisfied by a reasonable concept of emergence. The postulates will articulate conditions of adequacy for an appropriate explication of the concept of emergence. These conditions of adequacy are based primarily upon the philosophical and scientific history of the concept of emergence, in which the intended role of the concept is expressed. In the second part we will discuss and evaluate some candidates for the concept of emergence (...) in light of these conditions of adequacy. (shrink)

The potential reducibility of chemical entities to their physical bases is a matter of dispute between ontological reductionists on one hand, and emergentists on the other. However, relevant debates typically revolve around the reducibility of so-called ‘higher-level’ chemical entities, such as molecules. Perhaps surprisingly, even committed proponents of emergence for these higher-level chemical entities appear to accept that the ‘lowest-level’ chemical entities – atomic species – are reducible to their physical bases. In particular, the microstructural view of chemical elements, actively (...) developed and defended by emergentists, appears to hold that the explanatory power of nuclear charge justifies being reductionist about atomic species. My first task in this paper is to establish that nuclear charge cannot ultimately provide explanations sufficient to justify a reductionist approach to atomic species, unless we abandon the persuasive intuition that the presence of an element in a substance ought to explain the properties of that substance. The ‘missing piece’ for explaining the properties of substances by way of their elemental constituents is the electronegativity values of participant atoms. But electronegativity is a strikingly disunified concept that appears distinctly unamenable to analysis by way of fundamental physical principles. Through evaluating the uncertain physical identity of electronegativity, as well as its widespread and indispensable epistemic utility in chemical practice, I argue that electronegativity provides compelling grounds to seriously consider emergence for atomic species. (shrink)

Super-Humeans argue that the most parsimonious ontology of the natural world compatible with our best physical theories consists exclusively of particles and the distance relations between them. This paper argues by contrast that Super-Humean reduction goes insufficiently far, by showing there to be a more parsimonious ontology compatible with physics: Ultimate-Humeanism. This novel view posits an ontology consisting solely of the particles and distance relations required for the existence of a single brain. Super-Humeans impose conditions on what counts as an (...) ontology of the natural world to avoid their view slipping into this kind of ontology, but these conditions are arbitrarily imposed and once this is exposed, Super-Humeans face a dilemma. Either they can embrace Ultimate-Humeanism as the minimal ontology of the natural world compatible with physics, or (more likely) they can rethink the methodology that got them there. Overall, this paper argues that Super-Humeanism currently lacks principled motivation, outlines a framework for naturalistic ontological reductions, and exposes the consequences of unchecked adherence to a simplicity-driven methodology. (shrink)

Taking steps from Wilson’s distinction between strong and weak emergence, in this paper I cast doubts on the prospect of weak emergence. After discussing the relationship between properties set at different levels and supporting different counterfactuals and laws, I discuss one crucial condition for a property to be weakly emergent, one that is usually taken as the primary motivation for emergence, that of being “realization indifferent”. I set an argument aimed at showing that this realization indifference does not accord with (...) systematic relations holding between properties set at the mental level vis-a-vis their realizers. Since it is not possible to have mental properties which are not systematic, mental properties cannot be weakly emergent properties. (shrink)

The present chapter examines the philosophical problem of how it is possible, metaphysically and practically speaking, to develop a good moral character when one adheres to the view that a persisting self does not exist. It extracts answers from two thinkers who reject the concept of enduring identity, the Indian philosopher Vasubandhu (4th to 5th centuries CE) and the Western philosopher Derek Parfit (1942–2017). The first section of the chapter outlines some of Vasubandhu’s and Parfit’s shared assumptions concerning the nature (...) of the self and that of personal identity. In section 2, the focus shifts to the distinct ways in which each philosopher advances his understanding of the moral agent. Section 3 suggests that besides formulating different accounts of selfless agency, the ways in which Vasubandhu and Parfit grappled with the problem of agency reveal different approaches to addressing the question of human nature, and consequently, different ways of resolving the difficulties involved in becoming a good person. These differences become apparent in two practices that are relevant to crafting a moral character and that the two thinkers treat, moral commitment and the cultivation of virtue, which are discussed in the final part of the chapter. (shrink)

The question about life is inevitable. Our life is essentially what we are, what emerges within us at every moment. Our daily existence constantly leads us to think that our life is our circumstances, all the events that happen around us all the time. There is a dissonance and a sense of internal strangeness when we try to explain life rationally, mechanistically. But then, if life cannot be known by dissecting it, analyzing it, how can it be known? This question (...) is doubly important because knowing how to know life will allow us at the same time to know what life is. Many thinkers throughout history have faced the dilemma of how to know and define a living being. Many of them encountered the futility and evanescence of dissecting a living being and being left empty-handed, feeling that what they were looking for had already vanished, had already disappeared. Life is a path. In this article, we will investigate what this means and what consequences it has for the knowledge of life. (shrink)

Some arguments against the assumption that ordinary people may share common knowledge are sound. The apparent cost of such arguments is the rejection of scientific theories that appeal to common knowledge. My proposal is to accept the arguments without rejecting the theories. On my proposal, common knowledge is shared by ideally rational people, who are not just mathematically simple versions of ordinary people. They are qualitatively different from us, and theorizing about them does not lead to predictions about our behavior. (...) Nevertheless, models of action that assume common knowledge have a role to play in our understanding of collective rationality. (shrink)

The topic of mechanistic explanation in neuroscience has been a subject of recent discussion. There is a lot of interest in understanding what these explanations involve. Furthermore, there is disagreement about whether neurological mechanisms themselves should be viewed as reductionist in nature. In this paper I will explain how these two issues are related. I will, first, describe how mechanisms support a form of antireductionism. This is because the mechanisms that exist should be seen as involving part-whole relations, where the (...) behavior of a whole is more than the sum of its parts. After this, I will consider mechanistic explanations and how they can be understood. While some people think the explanations concern existing entities in the world, I will argue that we can understand the explanations by viewing them in terms of arguments. Despite the fact that it is possible to understand mechanistic explanations in this manner, the antireductionist point remains. (shrink)

This chapter takes inspiration from Wittgenstein’s thinking to formulate a non-reductive toolbox for the study of religion associated with generative modelling, specifically as applied in complex adaptive systems theory. It converges on a communal perspective on religion as multiscale active inference that contrasts starkly with common ‘straw person’ perspectives on religion that reduce it to ‘erroneous’ theorising generated by the brain. In contrast, we argue, religious practices at the enculturated level of description involve implicit and explicit meanings, experienced both individually (...) and collectively. Firstly, we characterise these in terms of Wittgenstein’s notions of rule-following and language games. Secondly, we discuss how the collective and perspectival aspects of religion in enculturation with morals, doctrines, rituals, and expressions can be formalised in terms of deep active inference in multi-agent systems. This approach describes how religions are incommensurable with scientific methods due to the epistemic separation between the different kinds of language games of religious and scientific practices. Their touchpoints tend to give rise to perpetual confusion and unproductive discussions, requiring perspicuous presentations that can be formulated with our toolbox. In this sense, our account has implications for tackling complex societal challenges such as ethical policy-making. (shrink)

I consider a problem for functional reductionism, based on the following tension. Say that b is functionally reduced to a. On the one hand, a and b turn out to be identical, and identity is a symmetric relation. On the other hand, functional reductionism implies that a and b are asymmetrically related: if b is functionally reduced to a, then a is not functionally reduced to b. Thus, we ask: how can a and b be asymmetrically related if they are (...) the same thing? I propose a solution to this tension, by distinguishing between ontological levels and levels of description. (shrink)

Science, philosophy of science, and metaphysics have long been concerned with the question of how novel things emerge. How can order come out of disorder? This book introduces a new account, contextual emergence, seeking to answer such questions."--Back cover.

We present a novel reductive theory of type-identity physicalism, which is inspired by the foundations of statistical mechanics as a general theory of natural kinds. We show that all the claims mounted against type-identity physicalism in the literature don’t apply to Flat Physicalism, and moreover that this reductive theory solves many of the problems faced by the various non-reductive approaches including functionalism. In particular, we show that Flat Physicalism can account for the appearance of multiple realizability in the special sciences, (...) and that it gives a novel account of the genuine autonomy of the kinds and laws in the special sciences. We further show that the thesis of genuine multiple realization, which is compatible with all forms of non-reductive approaches including functionalism, implies what we call token-dualism; namely the idea that in every token there are non-physical facts, which may either be non-physical properties or some non-physical substance. In other words, we prove that non-reductive kinds necessarily assume non-reductive tokens, i.e., token dualism. Finally, we show that all forms of non-reductive approaches including functionalism imply a literally multi-leveled structure of reality. (shrink)

RésuméJe soutiendrai que la façon dont Davidson rend compte de l'intention pure peut être comprise comme une analyse de l'intention comme étant relative à un jugement dans une perspective en première personne. Selon Davidson, avoir la pure intention de faire A, c'est formuler un jugement tout bien considéré qu'il est désirable de faire A. Dans cette analyse anti-réductionniste, l'intention est traitée comme un état irréductible du sujet. J’établirai une comparaison entre cette analyse et celle de Wright et je montrerai comment (...) la position de Davidson peut être considérée comme une analyse non-réductionniste rapportant l'intention au jugement, selon les directions suggérées par Wright. J'expliquerai ensuite comment cette analyse peut aider à éclaircir diverses difficultés qui se présentent dans la conception que Davidson se fait ultérieurement de la signification et du contenu mental. (shrink)

The main idea of this thesis is multi-descriptional physicalism. According to it, only physical entities are elements of our ontology, and there are different ways to describe them. Higher-level vocabularies (e.g., mental, neurological, biological) truly describe reality. Sentences about higher-level entities are made true by physical entities. Every chapter will develop multi-descriptional physicalism or defend it from objections. In chapter 1, I will propose a new conceptual reductive account that conceptually reduces higher-level entities to physical entities. This conceptual reductive account (...) combines resources from Heil’s truthmaker theory and either a priori physicalism or a posteriori physicalism. In chapter 2, I apply this conceptual reductive account to various debates. Physicalism, the multiple-realisability argument, the prototype theory of concepts, and truthmaker explanations will be discussed. In chapter 3, I will argue that a major aim of metaphysics should be to discover which entities are fundamental and explain why they suffice for the existence of derivative entities. In chapter 4, I will propose a new way to explain why sentences apparently about composite objects are true even though there are no composite objects. It combines resources from Cameron’s truthmaker theory and van Inwagen’s paraphrase strategy. In chapter 5, I will argue that the intuition that the mind and the body are very different does not show that the mind is distinct from the body. This intuition can be explained away by mentioning our dispositions to give non-physical explanations when we are ignorant of physical facts. In chapter 6, I will examine two arguments for the existence of a metaphysically independent level, and I will argue that only a modified version of one of them succeeds. I will argue that methodological principles support the view that there is a metaphysically independent level. (shrink)

The aim of this expository paper is to give an informal overview of a plausible naturalistic case for free will. I will describe what I take to be the main naturalistically motivated challenges for free will and respond to them by presenting an indispensability argument for free will. The argument supports the reality of free will as an emergent higher-level phenomenon. I will also explain why the resulting picture of free will does not conflict with the possibility that the fundamental (...) laws of nature are deterministic, and I will address some common objections. (shrink)

Some revisionary ontologies are highly parsimonious: they posit far fewer entities than what we quantify over in ordinary discourse. The most radical examples are minimal ontologies, on which physical simples are the only things that exist. Highly parsimonious ontologies, and especially minimal ones, face the challenge of either accounting for the truth of our ordinary quantificational discourse, or paraphrasing such discourse away. Common strategies for addressing this challenge include classical reduction, paraphrase nihilism, and a distinction between ontological and existence commitments. (...) I argue, however, that these strategies are either implausible or fail to provide truth conditions consistent with minimal or parsimonious ontologies. I then discuss, defend, and suggest ways to strengthen an alternative framework for reduction, on which the sentences of reducing theories ground those of reducible theories. Relative to the other options for defending minimal ontology, a strengthened grounding-reductive approach can provide more defensible truth conditions for minimal ontology, better preserve scientific realist intuitions, set a more attainable standard for reduction, and allow our existence commitments to be more responsive to empirical evidence and scientific expertise. As a result, I argue that minimal ontology becomes more defensible—though not certain—on a grounding-reductive framework. But even if minimal ontology were wrong, the grounding-reductive framework makes other parsimonious but non-minimal ontologies more plausible. (shrink)

According to epistemic reductionism about practical reasons, facts about practical reasons can be reduced to facts about evidence for ought-judgements. We argue that this view misconstrues practical conflicts. At least some conflicts between practical reasons put us in a position to know that an action ϕ is optional, i.e. that we neither ought to perform nor ought to refrain from performing the action. By understanding conflicts of practical reasons as conflicts of evidence about what one ought to do, epistemic reductionism (...) fails to account for this. In conflict cases in which ϕ-ing is optional, epistemic reductionism suggests that we have equally strong evidence for and against assuming that we ought to ϕ, and thus cannot be in a position to know that it is not the case that we ought to ϕ. This is a serious flaw. (shrink)

Unity of science was once a very popular idea among both philosophers and scientists. But it has fallen out of fashion, largely because of its association with reductionism and the challenge from multiple realisation. Pluralism and the disunity of science are the new norm, and higher-level natural kinds and special science laws are considered to have an important role in scientific practice. What kind of reductionism does multiple realisability challenge? What does it take to reduce one phenomenon to another? How (...) do we determine which kinds are natural? What is the ontological basis of unity? In this Element, Tuomas Tahko examines these questions from a contemporary perspective, after a historical overview. The upshot is that there is still value in the idea of a unity of science. We can combine a modest sense of unity with pluralism and give an ontological analysis of unity in terms of natural kind monism. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

En este artículo se plantea una reconsideración de la elección del reduccionismo de Parfit en Razones y personas como la posición que mejor explica el vínculo de dos sucesos mentales separados en el tiempo. Sin embargo, veremos cómo Parfit basa dicha elección en la consideración de la noción de persona como una sustancia, lo que en principio deja fuera cualquier otra perspectiva. El problema aparece cuando éste no considera apropiadamente el origen histórico de la pregunta en Locke, donde la noción (...) de “persona” se caracteriza en función de la “conciencia de sí”, lo que abre la posibilidad de entender dicha noción a partir de su naturaleza modal en vez de sustancial. En esta medida, se verá cómo esta tercera alternativa incluye una explicación de la conciencia de sí que podría considerarse más razonable bajo los propios términos de Parfit. (shrink)

The causal efficacy of a material system is usually thought to be produced by the law-like actions and interactions of its constituents. Here, a specific system is constructed and explained that produces a cause that cannot be understood in this way, but instead has novel and autonomous efficacy. The construction establishes a proof-of-feasibility of strong emergence. The system works by utilizing randomness in a targeted and cyclical way, and by relying on sustained evolution by natural selection. It is not vulnerable (...) to standard arguments against strong emergence, in particular ones that assume that the physical realm is causally closed. Moreover, it does not suffer from epiphenomenalism or causal overdetermination. The system uses only standard material components and processes, and is fully consistent with naturalism. It is discussed whether the emergent cause can still be viewed as ‘material’ in the way that term is commonly understood. (shrink)

One recently popular way to characterise strong emergence is to say that emergent entities possess novel causal powers. However, there is little agreement concerning the nature of powers. One controversy involves whether powers are single- or multi-track; that is, whether each power has only one manifestation type, or whether a single power can be directed towards a number of distinct manifestations. Another concerns how powers operate: whether a lone power manifests when triggered by the presence of a suitable stimulus, or (...) whether powers operate mutually such that several powers must ‘work together’ to bring about a particular manifestation. This paper examines how these distinctions—which can be cross-combined to frame four distinct accounts of the nature of powers—bear on the debate between emergentists and reductionists. (shrink)

Polger and Shapiro (2016) claim that unlike human-made artifacts cases of multiple realization in naturally occurring systems are uncommon. Drawing on cases from systems biology, I argue that multiple realization in naturally occurring systems is not as uncommon as Polger and Shapiro initially thought. The relevant cases, which I draw from systems biology, involve generalizable design principles called network motifs which recur in different organisms and species and perform specific functions. I show that network motifs with entirely different underlying causal (...) structures can perform the same function of interest. The article also considers the scope problem of multiple realization. (shrink)

“Dialectic” has been a matter of growing interest in contemporary philosophy. The present article analyzes dialectical methods and positions them by reference to two paradigmatic texts of German idealism and analytic philosophy, i.e. J.G. Fichte’s Science of Knowing (1804) and J. McDowell’s Mind and World. Both dialectical approaches will be interpreted with regard to their contribution in the debate on reductionism and anti-reductionism: both Fichte and McDowell claim that philosophical positions and logical terms stand in a dualistic relationship to one (...) another, on the one hand, but are separated by a gulf, on the other. I will argue that for McDowell dialectic seems to be an alternative to one-sided reductionisms as well as to normal anti-reductionistic holism. Furthermore, for Fichte dialectic is an adequate method for describing the relationship of reductionism and anti-reductionism itself. Both see in dialectic a technique for bridging the gulf between binary opposite terms of logic as well as mutually exclusive positions, such as mind and world, subject and object, or idealism and realism. (shrink)

La description en langue naturelle est l’artefact permettant de débuter un processus d’automatisation. La tâche principale de l’ingénieur du logiciel, c’est de combler le clivage entre langue naturelle et langue de la machine. Après avoir présenté quelques ontologies définies pour les processus d’automatisation, quelques pour et quelques contre l’emploi d’ontologies dans le génie logiciel sont présentées. Des indications pour dépasser cette simple opposition sont ensuite décrites. Des évaluations sur le réductionnisme dans les ontologies en ce qui concerne les possibles interactions (...) entre humains, machines et réalité muette terminent la présentation. (shrink)

This article examines the multiple realizability thesis within a causal framework. The beginnings of this framework are found in Elliott Sober’s “Multiple Realizability Argument against Reduction,”...

Último sermón de la iglesia del naturalismo fundamentalista por el pastor Hofstadter. Al igual que su mucho más famoso (o infame por sus incesantemente errores filosóficos) trabajo Godel, Escher, Bach, tiene una plausibilidad superficial, pero si se entiende que se trata de un científico rampante que mezcla problemas científicos reales con los filosóficos (es decir, el sólo los problemas reales son los juegos de idiomas que debemos jugar) entonces casi todo su interés desaparece. Proporciono un marco para el análisis basado (...) en la psicología evolutiva y el trabajo de Wittgenstein (ya actualizado en mis escritos más recientes). Aquellos que deseen un marco completo hasta la fecha para el comportamiento humano de la moderna dos sistemas punto de vista puede consultar mi libros Talking Monkeys 3ª ed (2019), Estructura Logica de Filosofia, Psicología, Mente y Lenguaje en Ludwig Wittgenstein y John Searle 2ª ed (2019), Suicidio pela Democracia 4ª ed (2019), La Estructura Logica del Comportamiento Humano (2019), The Logical Structure de la Conciencia (2019, Comprender las Conexiones entre Ciencia, Filosofía, Psicología, Religión, Política y Economía, Historia y Literatura (2019), Delirios Utópicos Suicidas en el siglo 21 5ª ed (2019), Observaciones sobre Imposibilidad, Incompletitud, Paraconsistencia, Indecidibilidad, Aleatoriedad, Computabilidad, Paradoja e Incertidumbre en Chaitin, Wittgenstein, Hofstadter, Wolpert, Doria, da Costa, Godel, Searle, Rodych Berto, Floyd, Moyal-Sharrock y Yanofsky(2019) y otros. "Podría ser justamente preguntado qué importancia tiene la prueba de Gödel para nuestro trabajo. Para un pedazo de matemáticas no puede resolver problemas del tipo que nos molesten. --La respuesta es que la situación, en la que tal prueba nos trae, es de interés para nosotros. ' ¿Qué vamos a decir ahora? ' --Ese es nuestro tema. Sin embargo, extraña que suene, mi tarea en lo que concierne a la prueba de Gödel parece meramente consistir en aclarar lo que tal proposición como: "Supongamos que esto se puede demostrar" significa en matemáticas. " Wittgenstein "Comentarios sobre los fundamentos de las matemáticas" p337 (1956) (escrito en 1937). "Mis teoremas sólo muestran que la mecanización de las matemáticas, es decir, la eliminación de la mente y de las entidades abstractas, es imposible, si uno quiere tener una base satisfactoria y un sistema de matemáticas. No he probado que haya preguntas matemáticas que sean indescifrables para la mente humana, pero sólo que no hay máquina (o formalismo ciego) que pueda decidir todas las preguntas de la teoría numérica, (incluso de un tipo muy especial) .... No es la estructura misma de los sistemas deductivos que está siendo amenazado con un descompostura, sino sólo una cierta interpretación de la misma, es decir, su interpretación como un formalismo ciego. " Gödel "Obras Recogidas" VOL 5, p 176-177. (2003) "Toda inferencia tiene lugar a priori. Los acontecimientos del futuro no pueden deducirse de los del presente. La superstición es la creencia en el nexo causal. La libertad de la voluntad consiste en el hecho de que las acciones futuras no se pueden conocer ahora. Sólo podíamos conocerlas si la causalidad fuera una necesidad interna, como la de la deducción lógica. --La conexión del conocimiento y lo que se conoce es la necesidad lógica. ("A sabe que p es el caso" no tiene sentido si p es una tautología.) Si por el hecho de que una proposición es obvia para nosotros, no sigue que es verdad, entonces la evidencia no es ninguna justificación para creer en su verdad. " TLP 5,133--5,1363 . (shrink)

"Люди говорят снова и снова, что философия на самом деле не прогресс, что мы по-прежнему заняты теми же философскими проблемами, что и греки. Но люди, которые говорят это, не понимают, почему это должно быть так. Это потому, что наш язык остался прежним и продолжает соблазнять нас задавать те же вопросы. До тех пор, пока по-прежнему существует глагол, который выглядит так, как будто он функционирует так же, как «есть и пить», до тех пор, пока у нас есть прилагательные «идентично», «правда» ( (...) « » » » » » » » » » возможно, до тех пор, как мы продолжаем говорить о реке времени, просторы пространства и т.д., и т.д., люди будут держать спотыкаясь над темже загадочные трудности и найти себя глядя на то, что никакое объяснение, кажется, способны очистки. И более того, это удовлетворяет стремление к трансцендентной, потому что, поскольку люди думают, что они могут видеть ‘"пределы человеческого понимания", они считают, конечно, тони могут видеть за этим. Эта цитата из Людвиг Витгенштейн, который пересмотрел философию около 70 лет назад (но большинство людей до сих пор не выяснить это). Деннетт, хотя он был философом в течение 40 лет, является одним из них. Любопытно также, что и он, и его главный антагонист Джон Сирл учились у знаменитых Витгенштейнов (Сирл с Джоном Остином, Деннет с Гилбертом Райлом), но Сирл более или менее получил точку, а Деннет т , (хотя это растяжение вещей, чтобы назвать Сирл или Райл Витгенштейнов). Деннетт является жесткий детерминант (хотя он пытается проникнуть реальность в задней двери), и, возможно, это связано с Райл, чья знаменитая книга "Концепция разума" (1949) продолжает быть перепечатаны. Эта книга проделала большую работу по изгнанию призрака, но он покинул машину. Деннетт любит делать ошибки Витгенштейна, Райл (и многие другие с тех пор) разоблачили в деталях. Наше использование слов сознание, выбор, свобода, намерение, частицы, мышление, определяет, волна, причина, произошло, событие (и так далее бесконечно) редко источником путаницы, но как только мы оставляем нормальную жизнь и введите философию (и любое обсуждение отделены от среды, в которой язык развивался-т.е., точный контекст, в котором слова имели смысл)хаос царит. Как и большинству,, Деннетне не хватает когерентной структуры - которую Сирл назвал логической структурой рациональности. Я расширил на этом значительно, так как я написал этот обзор, и мои последние статьи показывают подробно, что случилось с подходом Деннетк к философии, который можно было бы назвать Scientism на стероидах. Позвольте мне закончить с другой цитатой из Витгенштейна - "Амбиции является смерть мысли. Те, кто желает всеобъемлющего до современных рамок для человеческого поведения из современных двух systEms зрения могут проконсультироваться с моей книгой"Логическая структура философии, психологии, Минd иязык в Людвиг Витгенштейн и Джон Сирл" второй ред (2019). Те, кто заинтересован в более моих сочинений могут увидеть "Говоря обезьян - Философия, психология, наука, религия и политика на обреченной планете - Статьи и обзоры 2006-2019 3-й ed (2019) и suicidal утопических заблуждений в 21-мst веке 4-й ed (2019) th и другие. (shrink)

Biochemical kinds such as proteins pose interesting problems for philosophers of science, as they can be studied from the points of view of both biology and chemistry. The relationship between the biological functions of biochemical kinds and the microstructures that they are related to is the key question. This leads us to a more general discussion about ontological reductionism, microstructuralism, and multiple realization at the biology-chemistry interface. On the face of it, biochemical kinds seem to pose a challenge for ontological (...) reductionism and hence motivate a dual theory of chemical and biological kinds, a type of pluralism about natural kinds. But it will be argued that the challenge, which is based on multiple realization, can be addressed. The upshot is that there are reasonable prospects for ontological reductionism about biochemical kinds, which corroborates natural kind monism. (shrink)

Reductionists say things like: all mental properties are physical properties; all normative properties are natural properties. I argue that the only way to resist reductionism is to deny that causation is difference making (thus making the epistemology of causation a mystery) or to deny that properties are individuated by their causal powers (thus making properties a mystery). That is to say, unless one is happy to deny supervenience, or to trivialize the debate over reductionism. To show this, I argue that (...) if properties are individuated by their causal powers then, surprisingly, properties are individuated by necessary co-exemplification. (shrink)

Each thing is fundamental. Not only is no thing any more or less real than any other, but no thing is prior to another in any robust ontological sense. Thus, no thing can explain the very existence of another, nor account for how another is what it is. I reach this surprising conclusion by undermining two important positions in contemporary metaphysics: hylomorphism and hierarchical views employing so-called building relations, such as grounding. The paper has three main parts. First, I observe (...) hylomorphism is alleged by its proponents to solve various philosophical problems. However, I demonstrate, in light of a compelling account of explanation, that these problems are actually demands to explain what cannot be but inexplicable. Second, I show how my argument against hylomorphism illuminates an account of the essence of a thing, thereby providing insight into what it is to exist. This indicates what a thing, in the most general sense, must be and a correlative account of the structure in reality. Third, I argue that this account of structure is incompatible not only with hylomorphism, but also with any hierarchical view of reality. Although hylomorphism and the latter views are quite different, representing distinct philosophical traditions, I maintain they share untenable accounts of structure and fundamentality and so should be rejected on the same grounds. (shrink)

Universitäten weisen als institutioneller Inbegriff von Wissenschaft eine immense Fächervielfalt auf. Doch was hält diese Vielfalt der Wissenschaften zusammen, und was sind deren jeweiligen Besonderheiten? Ist es überhaupt sinnvoll, solch unterschiedliche Forschungsbereiche wie zum Beispiel die Koptologie und die Materialphysik nach ähnlichen Standards zu bewerten und zu vergleichen? Ist solch eine Vielfalt notwendig für den Erkenntnisfortschritt oder eher ein Hemmnis, das es zu überwinden gilt? Wie hängen die Theorien, Methoden und Gegenstandsbereiche der verschiedenen Disziplinen miteinander zusammen – haben die Disziplinen (...) einen je eigenen Zugriff auf verschiedene Aspekte der Wirklichkeit, oder lassen sich die Theorien und Erklärungen einiger Disziplinen auf die anderer zurückführen? Fragen dieser Art werden in diesem Buch aus der Perspektive verschiedener Disziplinen betrachtet. (shrink)

Psychiatry uncomfortably spans biological, psychological, and social perspectives on mental illness. As a branch of medicine, psychiatry is under pressure to conform to a biomedical model, according to which diseases are characterized primarily in biological terms. But psychiatry also draws on the psychotherapeutic tradition, which explains mental distress in terms of life experience and social influences.These approaches ought to complement each other, but historically this has not happened. With no theory creating global, systematic links between the two approaches, psychiatry is (...) divided... (shrink)

Reduction between theories in physics is often approached as an a priori relation in the sense that reduction is often taken to depend only on a comparison of the mathematical structures of two theories. I argue that such approaches fail to capture one crucial sense of “reduction,” whereby one theory encompasses the set of real behaviors that are well-modeled by the other. Reduction in this sense depends not only on the mathematical structures of the theories, but also on empirical facts (...) about where our theories succeed at describing real systems, and is therefore an a posteriori relation. (shrink)

This thesis investigates the epistemological and metaphysical relations between chemistry and quantum mechanics. These relations are examined with respect to how chemistry and quantum mechanics each describe a single inert molecule. A review of how these relations are understood in the literature shows that there is a proliferation of positions which focus on how chemistry is separate from quantum mechanics. This proliferation is accompanied by a tendency within the philosophy of chemistry community to connect the legitimacy of the field with (...) the autonomy of chemistry. First, it is argued that this connection should not be made. Secondly, it is argued that chemistry and quantum mechanics are unified in accordance with Harold Kincaid’s model of non-reductive unity because the two theories exhibit particular epistemic and metaphysical interconnections. Thirdly, a metaphysical account is examined which is incompatible with Kincaid’s model of unity; namely strong emergence as understood by Robin Hendry. According to Hendry, the structure of a single inert molecule strongly emerges from its quantum mechanical entities in the sense that there is downward causation. However, Hendry’s defense of this account faces certain problems. Moreover, the putative empirical evidence for his understanding of strong emergence can be explained without invoking strong emergence. This is shown by considering how quantum mechanics assumes an idealized understanding of a molecule’s stability and structure. In the light of the philosophical literature on idealizations, this idealization can be interpreted in two different ways, both of which explain why quantum mechanics describes the structure of a single molecule the way it does, without assuming strong emergence in Hendry’s sense. Each interpretation has philosophical implications regarding the nature of chemical properties, and the relation of chemistry and quantum mechanics. These implications are consistent with Kincaid’s model of unity and thus further support chemistry’s unity with quantum mechanics (as per Kincaid). (shrink)

Es mi afirmación que la tabla de intencionalidad (racionalidad, mente, pensamiento, lenguaje, personalidad, etc.) que presenta prominentemente aquí describe más o menos con precisión, o al menos sirve como heurística para, cómo pensamos y nos comportamos, y por lo tanto no abarca simplemente filosofía y psicología, sino todo lo demás (historia, literatura, matemáticas, política, etc.). Tenga en cuenta especialmente que la intencionalidad y racionalidad como yo (junto con Searle, Wittgenstein y otros) lo veo, incluye tanto el Sistema Linguístico deliberativo consciente (...) 2 como las acciones o reflejos inconscientes automatizados del Sistema 1 automatizado. -/- Proporciono una encuesta crítica de algunos de los principales hallazgos de dos de los estudiantes más eminentes del comportamiento de los tiempos modernos, Ludwig Wittgenstein y John Searle, sobre la estructura lógica de la intencionalidad (mente, lenguaje, comportamiento), tomando como punto de partida El descubrimiento fundamental de Wittgenstein -que todos los problemas verdaderamente "filosóficos" son los mismos —confusiones sobre cómo usar el lenguaje en un contexto particular, y por lo tanto todas las soluciones son iguales— mirando cómo se puede utilizar el lenguaje en el contexto en cuestión para que su verdad condiciones (Condiciones de Satisfacción o COS) son claras. El problema básico es que se puede decir cualquier cosa, pero no se puede significar (indicar COS claro para) cualquier expresión arbitraria y significado sólo es posible en un contexto muy específico. Analizo varios escritos por y sobre ellos desde la perspectiva moderna de los dos sistemas de pensamiento (popularizados como 'pensar rápido, pensar lento'), empleando una nueva tabla de intencionalidad y nueva nomenclatura de sistemas duales. Demuestro que esta es una heurística poderosa para describir el comportamiento. -/- Por lo tanto, todo comportamiento está íntimamente conectado si uno toma el punto de vista correcto. La Ilusión Fenomenológica (olvido a nuestro Sistema automatizado 1) es universal y se extiende no sólo a lo largo de la filosofía, sino a lo largo de la vida. Estoy seguro de que Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg y el Papa serían incrédulos si se les dijera que sufren del mismo problema que Hegel, Husserl y Heidegger, (o que difieren sólo en grado de los adictos a las drogas y el sexo en estar motivados por la estimulación de su cortices frontales por la entrega de dopamina (y más de 100 otros productos químicos) a través del tegmentum ventral y el núcleo accumbens), pero es claramente cierto. Mientras que los fenomenólogos sólo desperdiciaron mucho el tiempo de la gente, están desperdiciando la tierra y el futuro de sus descendientes. -/- . (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. 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)

Ethical reductionism is the best version of naturalistic moral realism. Reductionists regard moral properties as identical to properties appearing in successful scientific theories. Nonreductionists, including many of the Cornell Realists, argue that moral properties instead supervene on scientific properties without identity. I respond to two arguments for nonreductionism. First, nonreductionists argue that the multiple realizability of moral properties defeats reductionism. Multiple realizability can be addressed in ethics by identifying moral properties uniquely or disjunctively with properties of the special sciences. Second, (...) nonreductionists argue that irreducible moral properties explain empirical phenomena, just as irreducible special-science properties do. But since irreducible moral properties don't successfully explain additional regularities, they run the risk of being pseudoscientific properties. Reductionism has all the benefits of nonreductionism, while also being more secure against anti-realist objections because of its ontological simplicity. (shrink)

We argue for the mind’s independence from the body. We do so by making several moves. First, we analyze two popular kinds of reasons which have swayed many to adopt the independence of the mind from the body. Second, we advance an argument from the ontology of intentionality against the identity thesis, according to which the mind is identical to the brain. We try to show how intentionality is not reducible to or identical to the physical. Lastly, we argue that, (...) contrary to what many materialists contend, the concept of a mind, understood as an immaterial substance, existing independently of the body is both coherent and empirically evidenced. (shrink)

Some explanations in social science, psychology and biology belong to a higher level than other explanations. And higher explanations possess the virtue of abstracting away from the details of lower explanations, many philosophers argue. As a result, these higher explanations are irreplaceable. And this suggests that there are genuine higher laws or patterns involving social, psychological and biological states. I show that this ‘abstractness argument’ is really an argument schema, not a single argument. This is because the argument uses the (...) ‘is lower than’ relation, and this relation admits of different readings. I then suggest four rigorous definitions of the ‘is lower than’ relation, and show that the abstractness argument’s prospects are much brighter for some of these definitions than for others. To show this, I evaluate the so-called ‘disjunctive threat’ to the abstractness argument. (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)

The problem with reductionism in biology is not the reduction, but the implicit attitude of determinism that usually accompanies it. Methodological reductionism is supported by deterministic beliefs, but making such a connection is problematic when it is based on an idea of determinism as fixed predictability. Conflating determinism with predictability gives rise to inaccurate models that overlook the dynamic complexity of our world, as well as ignore our epistemic limitations when we try to model it. Furthermore, the assumption of a (...) strictly deterministic framework is unnecessarily hindering to biology. By removing the dogma of determinism, biological methods, including reductive methods, can be expanded to include stochastic models and probabilistic interpretations. Thus, the dogma of reductionism can be saved once its ties with determinism are severed. In this paper, I analyze two problems that have faced molecular biology for the last 50 years—protein folding and cancer. Both cases demonstrate the long influence of reductionism and determinism on molecular biology, as well as how abandoning determinism has opened the door to more probabilistic and unconstrained reductive methods in biology. (shrink)

In recent years, several authors advocated neuroscience imperialism, an instance of scientific imperialism whereby neuroscience methods and findings are systematically applied to model and explain phenomena investigated by other disciplines. Calls for neuroscience imperialism target a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, economics, and philosophy. To date, however, neuroscience imperialism has not received detailed attention by philosophers, and the debate concerning its identification and normative assessment is relatively underdeveloped. In this paper, I aim to remedy this situation by making some (...) conceptual distinctions about neuroscience imperialism and by providing a normative assessment of prominent calls in its favour. I shall articulate and defend two interrelated claims that, I argue, undermine prominent calls for neuroscience imperialism. First, the proponents of neuroscience imperialism significantly overstate the evidential and explanatory relevance of neuroscience methods and findings for the disciplines they target. And second, prominent calls for neuroscience imperialism point to an untenable reductionist position, which rests on unsupported empirical and normative presuppositions. To substantiate these two claims, I shall draw on two sets of influential calls for neuroscience imperialism, which respectively target the economic modelling of choice and entrenched philosophical conceptions of free agency. (shrink)