Apparently Putin announced a few days ago that Russia is planning to change it's nuclear doctrine:
AP News: Putin lowers threshold of nuclear response

As various commentators have pointed out, the change is clearly intended to make the doctrine more vague. It's also pretty much a direct warning to not allow Ukraine to strike targets on Russian territory using western weapons.

This seems a fairly big step for Russia, which seems to indicate that they're really concerned about possible long range strikes. It also demonstrates the bargaining power Russia's nuclear capabilities still represent. — Echarmion

What's bizarre is that, according to Russia's official position, Ukraine has been striking Russian territory with Western weaponry for more than a year, since when it first started using it against targets in Crimea. When Russia formally annexed more Ukrainian territories, those strikes expanded accordingly. So, as far as Russia is concerned, there would be no major escalation if Western donors permitted Ukraine to use their weapons with fewer geographic restrictions.

Besides, the Russians have been crying wolf for far too long for such theatrics to look credible. They've been insisting that the West was at war with them since even before the invasion. They've been issuing dire threats against the West since before the invasion. And they've been repeating basically the same things at regular intervals all throughout the campaign. Unfortunately, the West all too often plays an obliging dupe to such crude intimidation tactics.

One day, we’ll invent some superpower, try it out and our planet explodes.

I call it the theory of BOOM.

:rofl:

Quick question, do you find that different languages shape the way you feel? — frank

Not that I've noticed. Perhaps a psychology experiment could tease that out.

As a child and teen, lacking any talent for foreign languages, I was completely unable to learn English in spite of its being taught to me every single year from first grade in primary school until fifth grade in secondary school. Until I was 21, I couldn't speak English at all and barely understood what was spoken in English language movies. I thereafter learned alone through forcing myself to read English books I was interested in that were not yet translated into French, and looking up every third word in an English-to-French dictionary. Ever since, I've always struggled to construct English sentences and make proper use of punctuation, prepositions and marks of the genitive. — Pierre-Normand

I was never good at memorization, so formal language learning wasn't easy. And there wasn't much conversational practice available. Like you, at some point I just purposefully started reading - at home, in transit, powering through with a pocket dictionary. Reread English children's classics with great pleasure, now in the original - Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, etc. - then tackled adult fiction. Reading built up vocabulary and gave me a sense of the form and flow of the language. I still don't know much formal grammar - I just know (most of the time) what looks right and what doesn't. I suppose that this is not unlike the way LLMs learn language.

Oftentimes, I simply ask GPT-4 to rewrite what I wrote in better English, fixing the errors and streamlining the prose. I have enough experience reading good English prose to immediately recognise that the output constitutes a massive improvement over what I wrote without, in most cases, altering the sense or my communicative intentions in any meaningful way. The model occasionally substitutes a better word of phrase for expressing what I meant to express. It is those last two facts that most impress me. — Pierre-Normand

Yeah, thanks, I'll experiment with AIs some more when I have time. I would sometimes google the exact wording of a phrase to check whether it's correct and idiomatic. An AI might streamline this process and give better suggestions.

I mean even banning it for simple purposes such as improving grammar and writing clarity. Of course this will rely on the honesty of posters since it would seem to be impossible to prove that ChatGPT has been used. — Janus

One learns to write better primarily through example and practice, but having a live feedback that points out outright mistakes and suggests improvements is also valuable.

As a non-native speaker, much of my learning is due to reading and writing, but that is because I am pretty long in the tooth. Once spell- and grammar-checkers came to be integrated into everything, I believe they did provide a corrective for some frequent issues in my writing. I've briefly experimented with some free AI tools for improving style, but so far I haven't been very impressed by them.

Sadly, I don't know enough to understand your attempt. I'm reading all kinds of things. Haphazardly, since I'm just singing it. So probably unproductively. But maybe I'll get there. SEP seems helpful.

However, the difference between neural activity/consciousness and moving feet/walking is vast. I can't even see any common ground. — Patterner

I intentionally picked a frivolous and perhaps imperfect parallel to sharpen the issue. Perhaps it would go easier with an example from physical sciences, such as the relationship between fluid dynamics and molecular dynamics. But let's just leave it.

The brain's activity could do these things without any subjective experience/consciousness anywhere. And I'm sure we're making robots that prove the point. But let's say we add another system into the robot. Let's call it a kneural knet. The kneural knet observes everything the robot is doing, and generates a subjective experience of it all. We built and programmed the kneural knet, and we know it absolutely does not have any ability to affect the robot's actions.

Isn't this what epiphenomenalism is saying? — Patterner

This is more towards philosophical zombies.

Well, I wrote and lost a long reply to this — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's a shame...

There is a cluster of concepts closely related to potential: possibility in all its forms, probability, powers, dispositions. All of them have reasonable applications in thought. But where is the actual tension with empiricism? It would take an unreasonably austerer form of empiricism to deny all of that.

In regard to observations, I know of no empiricists who would deny being to all but observed instances (sense-impressions)? That's as good as (or as bad as) solipsism. Empiricism goes hand-in-hand with inference, and why not infer towards potential, etc.? There can be particular objections, but I don't see a path from empiricism to denying potential and the like tout court.

Also, walking is moving our feet. For simplicity, it's the word we use instead of spelling out the whole process. I don't say;
While upright, which is possible thanks to visual cues and the delicate workings of my inner ear, I moved my feet, alternating them, always placing the rear one in front of the other, until I found myself at the store.

instead, I just said I walked to the store. — Patterner

Well, that's what identity theorists say about consciousness vs neural activity. There are arguments against identity theory (other than epiphenomenalism), and similar arguments could also be deployed against the identity of walking and putting one foot in front of the other. But whether it's identity physicalism, reductive physicalism, emergence or anything else besides eliminativism, epiphenomenalism is supposed to argue against that on the grounds that consciousness appears to be superfluous if neural activity does all the causal work. My reductio aims to demonstrate that this argument is based on a misunderstanding of causality.

According to the definitions I quoted earlier, epiphenomenalism says mental states do not have any effect on physical events. Walking is a physical event, not a mental event. And walking certainly has an effect on physical events. So I don't know how you are thinking walking is epiphenomenal. — Patterner

I already addressed this. The causal exclusion argument that motivates epiphenomenalism applies equally to physical events in a similar supervenient relationship.

Trying and trying to figure out what you mean, but I'm not getting it. But I feel this sentence is key. Can you explain the relationship between moving your feet and walking? (Of course, we're not talking about sitting in a chair and shuffling your feet around. Or lying on the ground doing leg-lifts. Or pumping your legs on a swing to gain height. Or any number of things other than moving them in the way that produces walking.) — Patterner

Right, just as when you say "neutral activity is wanting to have milk" you don't mean just any random neural activity, but specifically whatever activity is responsible for/constitutes the experience of wanting to have milk.

Similarly, moving your feet in a certain way is responsible for/constitutes walking. I am not sure why you are having a difficulty with this parallel.

In what way does the physical act of walking fit any definition of epiphenomenal? I may be misunderstanding your questions. — Patterner

Originally, epiphenomenalism was indeed articulated in relation to mental/physical relationship. However, the justification for it does not rely on any uniquely mental aspects and can be applied more widely. You have gestured towards this justification earlier in the discussion:

I guess there are those who say the neural activity isn't experienced as wanting to have milk. Rather, the neutral activity is wanting to have milk. Experiencing the neural activity vs. the neural activity being the experience. The latter being the case if we are ruled by physical determinism. In which case, the "wanting to have milk" is, I guess, epiphenomenal, and serves no purpose. — Patterner

The idea, known as causal exclusion, is that if A (neural activity) does all the work, then B (experience) has no causal efficacy. Surely, you can see that this is in no way specific to mental phenomena? So, if moving your feet does all the causal work, then walking is reduced to an epiphenomenon.

I would not think so. — Patterner

Why not? Moving your feet does all the work, so why would we need walking?

I guess there are those who say the neural activity isn't experienced as wanting to have milk. Rather, the neutral activity is wanting to have milk. Experiencing the neural activity vs. the neural activity being the experience. The latter being the case if we are ruled by physical determinism. In which case, the "wanting to have milk" is, I guess, epiphenomenal, and serves no purpose. — Patterner

If walking consists in putting one foot in front of the other, is walking epiphenomenal?

The post was from Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs official account, in case that wasn't clear. Russian government agencies are not banned on X/Twitter, though Twitter is banned by the Russian government (same with Facebook and Instagram).

This thread belongs in the Lounge. What people find interesting or uninteresting in philosophy says more about them than about philosophy.

PS But yeah, antinatalism for sure.

Your question is too general. A lot depends on what decision you are making and which beliefs are influencing it. A decision has to be guided by some beliefs, otherwise it would just be random, and that can't even be called a decision.

Decisions about employee compensation should not be guided by personal likes and dislikes, but they absolutely should be guided by beliefs about work performance and other relevant factors.

On the other hand, a decision about a dinner invitation may well be guided by your personal feelings towards the people you wish to invite.

I have observed more than a few people argue that potency/potential is best left out of natural philosophy because it is, in principle, not empirically observable. Only act can be observable, hence, being good modern empiricists, we have no need for potency. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could you perhaps unpack what you mean by potency/potential in this context? Perhaps this is a well-trod ground for some, but I, for one, am not sure what exactly we are talking about. Is it specifically a question about Aristotelian philosophy and its applicability to modern science? Or something less historically and exegetically constrained?

If it is potentiality in the most general sense, I would think that force or energy fields - concepts that became very central in physics and other physical sciences after Newton - are all about potentiality*. The field concept is philosophically interesting indeed, but I don't see it being seriously attacked by empiricists.

* I am not talking specifically about potential fields. Though the term is suggestive in this context, its meaning is more constrained than what I had in mind.

I haven't read any of the discussion - just wanted to note that "Dr" Joe Dispenza (he has a chiropractor degree from something called Life University) is a former New Age cult teacher, an author of self-help books, and a purveyor of quantum healing and other kinds of woo.

I'm just trying to understand why 'we never see material things directly' is qualitatively different from a claim like 'we only ever digest what we consume'. — cherryorchard

... For instance, is 'we only ever hear sounds' a meaningful statement? — cherryorchard

I think the difference here is in how the sentences are structured. In "see... directly" the word 'directly' does not mean anything on its own. Instead, it is supposed to function as a modifier for the word 'see'. So, there is one thing here, not two: see-directly. That prompts the question: what does 'see-directly' mean? How is it different from just 'see' or 'see-indirectly'? Failing to find any plausible contrast, we realize that the modifier 'directly' doesn't do any work here: it is meaningless.

In the other two examples (digest what we consume, hear sounds) we are not introducing any new words or constructs. We are making statements that relate already well-understood words in conventional ways. The fact that the statements are self-evident does not make them meaningless. To make the latter statements more like the former, we would need to construct something like 'digest-via-conumption' or 'sound-hearing'. That would indeed raise the same issues that we had with 'see-directly'.

The problem with Ayer's direct/indirect seeing is not that he is stating something self-evident, but that he is saying something obscure.

I think elements of it are more appealing today given the possibility of humanity hitting the singularity increasing. It is within reason that if such an extraordinary event was to happen then practically everyone would have access to what would be limitless resources. Therefore, within Communist ideologies there could be some useful applications for such a transition. — I like sushi

All the people who take seriously the possibility of "humanity hitting the singularity" could probably fit on one city square, whereas the people who sincerely subscribe to some kind of Communist ideology are a substantial fraction of the world's population (no, I don't have the numbers to back this up, but this is the premise of the OP, which I am willing to grant). So, explaining the latter in terms of the former is inapt.

And now when even the CCP looks more like fascist than communist and time has past from the days of the Soviet Union, things seem even more nostalgic. — ssu

Was there ever a time when Fascism and Communism did not have a lot in common? Both are totalitarian ideologies right out of the box, and in their practical implementations they always gravitated towards each other.

In that sense we would say, "If language is to have meaning, then the Contrast Theory must hold." The relevant contrast here is the scenario where language has no meaning, and authors like Aristotle to not deny this at least as a logical possibility. — Leontiskos

Indeed, the challenge for the Contrast theory to meet its own criteria or meaningfulness would be to point out actual or potential instances where language fails to meet its prescriptions. The challenge would be met with examples like Austin's:

Austin spends quite a lot of time in 'Sense and Sensibilia' explaining that there is no point in claiming that we only ever see things indirectly, just precisely because, if that is the case, we no longer have any idea what seeing directly would even mean. There would no longer be any such thing as 'seeing directly'. And thus (Austin argues) the term 'seeing indirectly' when used in this way appears to mean something but actually doesn't. — cherryorchard

(Some ordinary language philosophers leveled a similar criticism against the realism vs nominalism debate.)

But maybe Gellner is right that this doesn't hold. If a child asks me what my coffee machine is for, I will explain that it makes coffee. And this explanation strikes me as perfectly valid, even though it is not possible to imagine any other kind of coffee machine. We simply have no concept of what such a machine would be like. That doesn't mean my explanation was wrong, does it? Or that I was using language incorrectly? — cherryorchard

No, I think you were right the first time when you pointed out that the contrast theory of meaning does not require that the opposite trait be exemplified for the exact same object under discussion. A meaningful word should pick out a particular instance or species (a "non-empty proper subset," as mathematicians would say) from the universe of discourse. In this case, the universe of discourse would include all kinds of machines (or all kinds of things), and we can readily come up with examples of machines or things that do not make coffee.

Just seen About Dry Grasses, the latest by the Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Long, slow, and depressing, just the way I like it :D Kidding about depressing, sort of.

I had seen two earlier films of Ceylan - Distant and Climates. There is much similarity between them, but I found Dry Grasses to be the most challenging. I still need to process it. There are different streams running through the film, and they sometimes undermine one another. The film ends with some rather uncharacteristic run of a philosophical inner monologue set to a mournful classical score - not unusual in a film with pretensions to artiness... except that this self-narration by the main character doesn't sit comfortably with what we see of him over the preceding three hours. But neither is it entirely phony nor ironic. As ever, Ceylan's portrayal of the protagonist, with whom he seems to partially identify (in all three films the main character is an amateur photographer, like Ceylan himself), is nuanced and unsparing, helped by a top-notch performance by the actor who plays him, as well as the rest of the cast. But here he is also revealed to be an unreliable narrator, as emphasized in one bizarre scene that briefly breaks through the fourth wall. There is plenty of beauty in the film, not least its cinematography, but here even beauty can be in tension with its canvas.

An interesting new study. NDEs have been compared to effects of psychedelics before, but those comparisons were "inter-subject": they compared reports of NDE experiences and psychedelic experiences in different people. For this study, the authors surveyed subjects who had experienced both.

Mystical-like states of consciousness may arise through means such as psychedelic substances, but may also occur unexpectedly during near-death experiences (NDEs). So far, research studies comparing experiences induced by serotonergic psychedelics and NDEs, along with their enduring effects, have employed between-subject designs, limiting direct comparisons. We present results from an online survey exploring the phenomenology, attribution of reality, psychological insights, and enduring effects of NDEs and psychedelic experiences (PEs) in individuals who have experienced both at some point during their lifetime. We used frequentist and Bayesian analyses to determine significant differences and overlaps (evidence for null hypotheses) between the two. Thirty-one adults reported having experienced both an NDE (i.e., NDE-C scale total score ≥27/80) and a PE (intake of LSD, psilocybin/mushrooms, ayahuasca, DMT or mescaline). Results revealed areas of overlap between both experiences for phenomenology, attribution of reality, psychological insights, and enduring effects. A finer-grained analysis of the phenomenology revealed significant overlap in mystical-like effects, while low-level phenomena (sensory effects) were significantly different, with NDEs displaying higher scores of disembodiment and PEs higher scores of visual imagery. This suggests psychedelics as a useful model for studying mystical-like effects induced by NDEs, while highlighting distinctions in sensory experiences. — Martial, Charlotte & Carhart-Harris, Robin & Timmermann, Christopher. (2024). Within-subject comparison of near-death and psychedelic experiences: acute and enduring effects. Neuroscience of Consciousness

Story collections by Julio Cortázar. There is a clear influence of Borges in a few "high concept" stories, which I generally don't like much. I actually liked Cortázar better than Borges in such stories - the latter can feel like a dry intellectual exercise, but Cortázar is never dry. The themes and the style vary. One of my favorites is "End of the Game," written from the point of view of a young girl.

Now reading Carlos Fuentes' "The Death of Artemio Cruz"

Anyone read these, any or all of of Pratchett? Thoughts? — Amity

I liked Pratchett. I don't read much fantasy, but I found his style and humor appealing. I was introduced to Pratchett by a college buddy who was a big fan. Later I was gifted a set of audiobooks and I would often fall asleep while listening to them in bed :) (not because they are boring, it's just that audiobooks have this effect on me).

The first book in the series is rather unlike the rest in tone and pacing. At that point, he probably didn't anticipate a big success and a long series, so he went all-out. Later books are more measured. Many of the books have reappearing characters and places, so it probably helps to read those in sequence, but it's not essential.

BTW, why do you think that the geocentrists in ancient times and middle ages were wrong? What was their mistake? — boundless

Geocentrism can be viewed as a matter of perspective, and as such it is neither right nor wrong - it is apt in some contexts and not others. But if you are referring to ancient cosmologies viewed (somewhat ahistorically) as scientific theories, they posited things that proved to be untenable when more and better observations (appearances) became available, and our analytical tools improved as well.

The stars and the Sun do orbit the Earth in the earthbound frame — SophistiCat

They do not. — AmadeusD

I see that you need a refresher in relative motion. Start with linear motion - boats and trains and all that. Rotating frames are a little trickier, but riding a carousel can give you an intuitive feel for them (or a motion sickness).

"The Sun and the stars move from east to west" is a good descriptions of appareances. In this sense, it is 'true' and 'valid', yes.

The problem is the interpretation that we give to that statement. The ancient and medieval geocentrists clearly implied that such a statement described the 'external world as it is': the apparent motion of the celestial objects, to them, wasn't a mere appearance but the 'real motion' of the celestial objects.
They clearly didn't consider their model as a mere 'predictive model' but as an accurate description of the 'external world as it is'.

BTW, clearly we still use a 'geocentric model' in our daily lives, for practical purposes. As you say, it correctly describes the appearances. But we recognize, on reflection, that these appearances are mere appearances, so to speak.
So that's why I said that the statement "The Sun and the stars move from east to west" is provisionally/pragmatically true. But if it's interpreted in the way the ancient and medieval geocentrists did, it's false. Their mistake was an incorrect interpretation of appearances.

Do you agree with my analysis? If not, how do you explain the fact that those people were mistaken? — boundless

No, I still don't know what you mean by 'external world as it is,' in general and specifically in this context. You say that the description is good, but it is not true to the 'external world as it is'. How can we know that? Apparently, not from appearances, since that is what is being described, and the description is good.

It is not veridical to claim the stars and Sun orbit the Earth. — AmadeusD

Although no one claimed this, this would not be wrong either, just a little misleading, since the statement suggests more than it actually says. The stars and the Sun do orbit the Earth in the earthbound frame, just not quite the way in which the ancients imagined it when they made similar statements.

See, this is what I was talking about: a lot of confusion is created when the term "information" is thrown around with little care given to its meaning. In your OP you were specifically referring to Shannon's theory, and Shannon's theory is all about communication. Shannon did not set out to answer the question, "what is information?" He was interested in the problem of reliable and efficient communication, and his concept of information makes sense in that context. Other concepts of information have been put to different uses. Yours, on the other hand, seems to be a solution in search of a problem.

If you start with the question, "what is information?" the way to go is to survey existing uses of the word. Another approach would be to do what Shannon and other researchers did, which is to start with a specific problem, something that matters, and then see whether a concept with a family resemblance to "information" fits. But starting with the answer, before you even understand the question, is backwards.

Not sure if you are disagreeing with me or not. If by 'taken literally' one means that it correctly describes the appearances then, yes, I agree that it can be said to be 'literally true'.
On the other hand, the 'geocentrists' believed that our experience was totally veridical: the Earth was at the center of the universe and didn't move and the Sun revolved around it. It wasn't a mere 'it appears as if' but 'it appears because it is so'. In other words, they were extremely naive realists. — boundless

I wasn't talking about geocentrists, I was commenting on the plain facts about the rising and setting of the sun and the stars. This is the stuff of astronomy textbooks, not to mention thousands of years of observations by people all around the world. I don't know what is not veridical about that. Yes, this is a description of appearances. Are implying that there is a world beyond appearances that can somehow be known? Is that what you are referring to by the honorific 'a correct description of (external) reality as it is'?

Information crucially depends on the sender and the receiver (and noise, if any) - this is what is being neglected here. Divining from patterns of tea leaves or decoding random marks on clay gives you no information, because no information was sent in the first place, despite there being a message. Similarly, numbers in themselves are not information, because they do not encode any message - they are just there.

The message "The cat is on the mat. The cat is on the mat." gives you no more information than the message "The cat is on the mat." even though the former contains more bits than the latter (I am discounting noise for simplicity). The message "Your name is X" gives you no information if your name really is X and you are not suffering from amnesia. So, information depends on the receiver as well.

Numbers can be used in mathematical modeling of communication, but numbers in themselves are no more information than they are novels or bridges or population clusters.

I'm not sure. Suppose an archaeologist uncovers tablets on which are inscribed a lost language. What did the archaeologist discover? Seemingly, information that can no longer be decoded. Years later, the language was translated. Did the information spring into being? Or was it always there? — hypericin

Exactly, how is it that the same marks on dry clay can carry more or less information in different contexts? And note that it's not just any marks that transmit information. Some random indentations and scratches on the same tablet would not do. How could that be if marks themselves were information?

Also, note that in your example you used clay tablets, not numbers (and in your OP you went back and forth between numbers and computers, which, of course, are not the same thing). This shows that there isn't a necessary connection between information and numbers. Numbers or bits can serve as an abstract representation of an encoded message.

"Information" is a vexed term, as it is used differently (and often vaguely) in different contexts. A crucial thing about Shannon's theory in particular, which is often lost when it is casually mentioned, as you do here, is that it is a theory of communication, in which bits are only one part of a system that also includes, at a minimum, the encoder, the channel and the decoder. Taken in isolation, numbers or bits cannot be identified with information in any meaningful way.

The statement 'the Sun and the stars revolve around Earth and they move from east to west' is, if taken literally (i.e. as an accurate description of 'what really happens in the external world'), false. — boundless

The statement 'the Sun and the stars revolve around Earth and they move from east to west' is, if taken literally, perfectly true, as anyone can attest*. What is unclear is the honorific 'what really happens in the external world'.

* Unless you are dead-set on some privileged reference frame, in which case you must be going through life in chronic confusion, unable to understand simple directions like "left" or "east".

FUCKING MAGNETS, HOW DO THEY WORK?

I think the salient point is that there can be multiple reductive explanations from different perspectives. So, to say that I went to the shop because I was thirsty is a reductive explanation, as much as saying I went to the shop because of certain neural activity is. Such different explanations do not contradict, and should not exclude, one another. — Janus

:up:

So for example, the epiphenomenalist might say consciousness does no work, just "goes along for the ride", so to speak, but that would be an illegitimate elimination of one reasonable way of explaining human behavior. I think what puzzles people is that we cannot combine the two explanations or achieve any absolute perspective which would eliminate one and retain the other. 'Either/ or' thinking seems to generally dominate the human mind.

I am not sure that epiphenomenalism is all that common in our thinking. Historically, the term itself was coined in the context of mental vs physical, and that is where you will generally encounter it. It was always puzzling to me that those who bring up epiphenomenalism tend to be narrowly focused on the mental/physical divide and don't seem to realize that the same reasoning applies (or fails) across a wide range of theories and explanations.

Have you read the book? I feel like it sort of gets misrepresented in reviews because the argument really doesn't come into focus until the last chapter. Hoffman's point is an argument about a certain, fairly dominant form of naturalism that imports Kantian dualism into "science." — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, I'd heard of Hoffman's "interface theory," but was discouraged by the largely dismissive reaction of the professional community and didn't invest more time in him. The point to which you are referring remains obscure to me.

I agree on the type of error involved. I disagree on the track record of reductionism. How many true reductions do we have? Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics is the canonical example, but it is a rare example. 120 or so years on, the basics of molecular structure in chemistry has yet to be reduced to physics. Reductions are not common. Unifications, the explanation of diverse phenomena via an overarching general principle are far more common. For example, complexity studies explains disparate phenomena like earthquakes and heart beats via a similar underlying mathematics. But of course this does not say that heart beats or earthquakes are "nothing but," the math they share in common. Yet it seems to me that unifications are very often misunderstood as reductions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wasn't talking about some grand inter-theoretical Reductionist programme, but of the general form of reductive explanation, which is prevalent in science and elsewhere. The idea is to explain something in terms of something else - reduce it to something else. This could mean identifying the principal causes of a concrete event or a mechanism behind a class of observations.

When Newton proposed a theory that explained a large class of dynamical observations, he thereby gave them a reductive explanation. The motion of a cannonball as it accelerates towards the earth is nothing but the action of the gravitational force in Newton's dynamics. He also reduced Kepler's theory of planetary motion to his own theory - that is an example of unification via reduction. (The example that you give is not unification, as there is no common theory - just a structural similarity across unrelated domains. Such mathematical similarities are commonplace - after all, we don't usually have to invent new math for every new problem.)

But the above is a singular example. I was thinking more of reductive explanations that we make all the time: A happened because of B or A functions by way of B. Even if we are talking specifically about inter-theoretic reductions, on a smaller scale, they are commonplace in science. For example, mechanical properties of materials that are taken as data in dynamics and statics are being explained in (reduced to) materials science, chemistry and solid-state physics.

That and facts about composition is misunderstood as a reduction. To be sure, all cells are made from molecules. All molecules are made from atoms. This isn't a reduction. You can't predict how a molecule works from theory in physics, you need all sorts of ad hoc empirically derived inputs for it to work. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Identifying composition can be a crucial step towards a reductive explanation. Because we know generic properties of many materials, knowing what something is made from can tell us a lot about that thing, reducing some of its properties to those of the materials that compose it. We are not talking about a complete reduction though, except in trivial instances.

But I think the error you identify is directly related to smallism and reductionism. The justification for the causal closure principle is normally that minds are "nothing but" brains/bodies, and the brains and bodies are "nothing but" atoms and their constituent particles. Particles are the smallest structure and thus most fundemental. Everything is "nothing but" these, and so everything is describable in terms of their interactions. This makes all other causal explanations duplicative. At best they are a form of data compression. And so this makes motive irrelevant and conciousness epiphenomenal. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Causal closure does not imply epiphenomenalism, unless you interpret it too broadly (i.e., not the way it is usually understood). One could believe that the world is closed under fundamental physics, but that does not automatically imply that everything else, such as consciousness (or chemistry), is causally inert. It just doesn't have a place in the explanatory framework of fundamental physics, and if you put it there by hand, then you would have causal overdetermination. But alternative explanatory frameworks can coexist without conflict. Consciousness (and chemistry) could still take place in a world that is closed under fundamental physics, but you would need other means than physics to identify and describe mental (chemical) phenomena qua mental (chemical) phenomena.

Exactly...the reductionists seek to analyze the physical in terms of the mental (idealism) or the mental in terms of the physical (eliminative physicalism). Tendentious thinking prevails on both sides. — Janus

Nothing wrong with reductionist analysis as such (A is nothing other than B) - that is the most common type of explanation, particularly in science. Where ephiphenomenalism goes disastrously wrong is in a mistaken application of the causal exclusion principle. It is like saying that if you are putting one foot in front of the other, then you cannot also be walking, and if you are walking, then you cannot also be fetching a glass.

Eliminativist positions sometimes succumb to this type of error, but not all eliminativism is necessarily wrongheaded - it just needs to be properly motivated. Merely having an alternative explanation is not enough, you need to show that it is superior in every respect, and that can be a tall order.

I think Plantinga's argument is ultimately just one simplified form of an entire web of arguments that can be made vis-á-vis psychophysical harmony, causal closure, and epistemology. Hoffman is able to flesh this out with some models and empirical results. Is it air tight? No. But then again what they are arguing against is also a position that is not airtight. Yet this position, like reductionism, is one that seems to demand that it be "assumed true until decisively proven otherwise," and I'd venture that there is not good grounds to accept this — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am still not sure what position this is supposed to be. Plantinga's attack is aimed squarely at the "evolutionary naturalist," and Hoffman would be its first victim if it had any merit. What is it that Hoffman is arguing against?