The second meaning of reductionism is the assertion that all sciences should reduce to physics (just as Apollo did). The argument for this hinges mainly on the success of physics up to this point. At least methodologically, scientists should continue to stick to what's been working for thousands of years. We should approach all topics available for scientific inquiry as if the goal is further reduction to physics. — frank

This is something I am wrasseling with right now. The source I generally turn to is a paper by P.W. Anderson called "More is Different." He talks about the hierarchy of science and the relationships between different levels. Here's what he says:

…the reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a constructionist" one: The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more the ele- mentary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less to those of society.

The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other. That is, it seems to me that one may array the sciences roughly linearly in a hierarchy, according to the idea: The elementary entities of science X obey the laws of science Y… — P.W. Anderson - More is different

The footer of the quote has a link to the paper.

On the other hand, I'm currently reading a book by Addy Pross called "What is Life" about how life develops from non-living chemistry. In it, Pross claims that the rejection of reductionism is a mistake. That's why I'm wrasseling. I think he's wrong, but I'm reevaluating my position.

Thoughts? — frank

I forgot to mention - the article I linked is a reprint with a new introduction. The introduction is actually longer than Anderson's paper and has a lot more detail on the subject. You should take a look at it too.

Reductionism can be simplified even further. Science never asserts that its underlying premises are true, only that they have not been able to be disproven at this time. While scientists must rely on what has been scientifically ascertained up to that point, nothing is sacred.

Thus, in the first case, someone may discover some new information that finally negates an earlier accepted conclusion in science. The only reasonable thing to do at that point is re-evaluate the now questionable underlying theory until that can once again pass scientific rigor. This may then extend out to other theories that rely on this building block. Only then can science continue upward.

With this, we see the second case cannot be a viable reductionism argument for science. To conclude that everything must end in physics is the negation of the scientific ideal that nothing which has been learned can be questioned. Physics has no special place in scientific theories in this regard.

The Nagel approach says we will eventually reduce a baseball game to quantum theory by way of bridge laws which connect the dots. This is expected to be a matter of vocabulary.

So we will derive the baseball game from quantum theory with the bridge laws as a crutch.

Is this really true? We don't know. We may at some point discover that Yahweh has actually been pulling the strings the whole time.

It's more just the attitude that what scientists should be aiming for is this Nagel approach. If you agree with that, you're a kind of scientific reductionist.

Reductionism can be simplified even further. Science never asserts that its underlying premises are true, only that they have not been able to be disproven at this time. While scientists must rely on what has been scientifically ascertained up to that point, nothing is sacred.

Thus, in the first case, someone may discover some new information that finally negates an earlier accepted conclusion in science. The only reasonable thing to do at that point is re-evaluate the now questionable underlying theory until that can once again pass scientific rigor. This may then extend out to other theories that rely on this building block. Only then can science continue upward.

With this, we see the second case cannot be a viable reductionism argument for science. To conclude that everything must end in physics is the negation of the scientific ideal that nothing which has been learned can be questioned. Physics has no special place in scientific theories in this regard. — Philosophim

Yes, well said.

The Nagel approach says we will eventually reduce a baseball game to quantum theory by way of bridge laws which connect the dots. This is expected to be a matter of vocabulary. — frank

I'm not familiar with Nagel, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. It seems like his position on reductionism relates mostly to it's presentation of consciousness as a physical process. His objection, if I understand it correctly, is that the reductionist approach ignores the experience of qualia.

Anderson's approach is completely different and much broader. It takes in all of science. I don't know but I'd imagine Nagel would not agree with Anderson's interpretation.

I'm not familiar with Nagel, so I looked him up on Wikipedia. It seems like his position on reductionism relates mostly to it's presentation of consciousness as a physical process. His objection, if I understand it correctly, is that the reductionist approach ignores the experience of qualia. — T Clark

That's Thomas Nagel. The bridge-laws guy is Ernest Nagel.

That's Thomas Nagel. The bridge-laws guy is Ernest Nagel. — frank

I'll take a look.

One challenge to Nagel's approach is that it basically reduces scientific theories to arrangements of words. Intuitively, a theory is more than a grammatical entity.

But if they're more, what is this "more"?

That's Thomas Nagel. The bridge-laws guy is Ernest Nagel. — frank

Here we are reducing everything to physics but the right nagel escapes us.

We just need to Finn Nagel it.

A theory is a system of ideas.

A grammatically correct sequence of words may be used to express a system of ideas.

The word "expression" implies a vehicle for conveyance. A vehicle is something other than the thing being conveyed.

An expression is something separate from the thing being expressed.

A theory is something other than the words used to express it.

I think the wish to reduce everything else to physics, is because physics seems to offer the most unequivocal form of objectivity. In some fundamental way, physics deals with 'ideal object' i.e. objects whose every property and behaviour can be described unequivocally in mathematical terms - which is the ideal as far as scientific method is concerned. (Or at least that was the hope, up until the 1920's and quantum physics.) In any case, scientific method is generalised to describe everything that can be described accurately in precisely quantified terms, which is why physics and physicalism are paradigmatic for it.

Reductionism as an approach has been astoundingly successful. But difficulties arise when it is applied to philosophical problems, because these are problems that concern subject of experience, not objects which can be quantified. Nearly all the complaints against reductionism in philosophy, including Thomas Nagel's criticisms, arise from the attempt to treat subjects as objects.

The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all. — Thomas Nagel, The Core of Mind and Cosmos

Reductionism as an approach has been astoundingly successful. But difficulties arise when it is applied to philosophical problems, because these are problems that concern subject of experience, not objects which can be quantified. — Wayfarer

It's unclear to me what kind of things are "philosophical problems" or a "subject of experience". Also, the only object of scientific reduction is what Descartes, Galileo and Locke called "primary qualities", and therefore the criticism that reductionism cannot address or account for anything else is a category mistake (i.e. playing one language-game in terms of another). Thomas Nagel's idealist – mysterian – objection to modern physics is, I think, patently incoherent and amounts to an argument from incredulity.

Nagel's argument reminds me of Joe Sachs, who sees the prevalence of mathematics in modeling phenomena as a less than an unqualified success. From his essay: The Battle of the Gods and the Giants.

But the necessity that every object of intellect have an image must have some cause.
What can it be? I am sure that some of you are there ahead of me. After all, everyone
knows that Aristotle rejected Plato's belief in separate forms, and taught that the universals
that the intellect deals with are produced by the act of abstraction. If the universals came
out of the sensible particulars in the first place, then the images of those particulars would
also be images of the corresponding abstractions. There is only one problem with this
solution. Like most of the things that everyone knows about Aristotle, this one is not true.
It is not even close. It is so spectacularly wrong that it blocks the understanding of anything
Aristotle thought. It is not a tenable doctrine in the first place, as I will try to show. But
worse than that, the belief that Aristotle held such a view makes the Physics a closed book,
and that in turn deprives us of the most powerful alternative we might consider to the
physics we are accustomed to. The idea of abstraction, as we use it and as we tend to
impose it on Aristotle, abolishes the idea of nature.

Like most of the things that everyone knows about Aristotle, this one is not true.
It is not even close. It is so spectacularly wrong that it blocks the understanding of anything
Aristotle thought.

Lloyd Gerson says exactly the same in his essay 'Platonism v Naturalism'.

It's unclear to me what kind of things are "philosophical problems" or a "subject of experience". — 180 Proof

That they're 'unclear to you' is not an argument against it. It might just as well be an acknowledgement that you don't understand the problem.

The division between primary and secondary qualities is indeed central to the whole modern world-construct. As Nagel puts it succintly

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

You can see how this provides the context for the entire 'hard problem of consciousness' debate. But then, as you think that is a pseudo problem and that there really isn't any issue to discuss, then there really isn't any issue to discuss, so let's leave it at that.

Maybe it is time for a Gerson showdown. I understand Sachs as challenging the "Ur-Platonism" idea put forward by Gerson.

You know already of course that physics, the be-all-and-end-all of science, can be reduced to mathematics; mathematics is pure thought. Hallelujah! :cool:

Materialism reduced ... to immaterialism.

That they're 'unclear to you' is not an argument against it. — Wayfarer

I didn't propose an argument, Wayf. I wonder if you can clarify those phrases – what you mean by those terms.

I'm struggling to do the reading. Gerson's books are about 90% addressed to other academics in defense of his interpretations, and the whole field of scholarship is so dense that it's almost impossible for the casual reader to absorb. All I've noticed is from the Gerson lectures I've listened to and read, is that Gerson seems to defend a general interpretation which I'm drawn to - anti-reductionist, anti-nominalist, and so on. Probably better not to go down that road in this thread.

The 'subject of experience' is the being to whom experiences occur. The 'problems of philosophy' are (for example) the kinds of problems about the nature of mind, nature of universals, number, ontology, metaphysics and so on. The problem of reductionism arises in the attempt to apply the quantitative approach of the sciences to the qualitative problems of philosophy.

Probably better not to go down that road in this thread. — Wayfarer

Agreed. Deserves its own lane.

Can the natural world be understood when natural beings are reduced to something else?

I think that this what @Paine is getting at.

Yes. That is what I am trying to say.

:up:

I find Sellar's idea of discursive categories useful: "the space or reasons" and "the space of causes".

The first is also the domain of qualities and 'why' questions while the second is the domain of quantities and 'how' questions. Conflating the two seems to be a perennial human stumbling block.

The inability of science to deal with the qualitative character of human experience is a feature not a bug.

↪180 Proof The 'subject of experience' is the being to whom experiences occur. — Wayfarer

So this "being" is any living, complex organism? (à la e.g. panpsychism, Berkeleyan idealism, etc)

The 'problems of philosophy' are (for example) the kinds of problems about the nature of mind, nature of universals, number, ontology, metaphysics and so on.

Do they have definite (testable) solutions like math problems, logic problems & scientific problems? If not, I think 'speculative puzzles (aporia) or questions (gedankenexperiments)' are more accurately used in philosophical discourses than "problems".

The problem of reductionism arises in the attempt to apply the quantitative approach of the sciences to the qualitative problems of philosophy.

Both are conceptual approaches – especially insofar as the latter is applied to the former – so this "quantitative-qualitative" distinction seems to make only a trivial difference.

Anyway, thanks for clarifying, Wayfarer. :cool:

... physics, the be-all-and-end-all of science, can be reduced to mathematics ... — Agent Smith

Maybe metaphysically, but not scientifically.

Materialism reduced ... to im-materialism.

Embodied X "reduced ... to" dis-embodied Y. :roll:

physics, the be-all-and-end-all of science, can be reduced to mathematics ...
— Agent Smith
Maybe metaphysically, but not scientifically.

Materialism reduced ... to im-materialism.
Embodied X "reduced ... to" dis-embodied Y. :roll: — 180 Proof

:smile: Physics does reduce to math and that explains the existence of theoretical physicists (the guys who search the mathematical universe for objects that could be used to model the physical world). What really got me stoked was how many elementary particles were predicted to exist years before they were actualy discovered by experimental physicists i.e. math is one step ahead of physics and also that at all scales, mathematical objects abound). What sayest thou?

... math is one step ahead of physics and also that at all scales, mathematical objects abound — Agent Smith

... physics, the be-all-and-end-all of science, can be reduced to mathematics ...
— Agent Smith

Maybe metaphysically, but not scientifically. — 180 Proof

So Shakespeare's plays & sonnets can be "reduced to" Elizabethan-era grammar (which was "one step ahead" of the Bard)? :sweat:

Oh, ChatGPT, thou wondrous oracle, compose for us a brief sonnet, Shakespearean style, in praise of the power of mathematics for physics.

O wondrous numbers, that can make us see
The secrets of the universe untold,
And in their symmetry, reveal to me
The laws that govern all that's bold.

In physics, where we measure what is real,
And seek to understand the why and how,
Mathematics is the mighty steel,
That cuts through ignorance and makes us know.

For every force and motion that we see,
And every energy that lights the stars,
Is but a tale, a story writ in thee,
And all the mysteries that still confound us, thus are ours.

So here's to thee, O Math, our guide so true,
In physics, and all else, our hearts anew. — ChatGPT

Now there's a triumph of reductionism, if ever there 'twas one.

Although on further contemplation, I reject the ‘and all else’ in the last line. ‘And much else’ - that I could go with.

... math is one step ahead of physics and also that at all scales, mathematical objects abound
— Agent Smith
... physics, the be-all-and-end-all of science, can be reduced to mathematics ...
— Agent Smith

Maybe metaphysically, but not scientifically.
— 180 Proof
So Shakespeare's plays & sonnets can be "reduced to" Elizabethan-era grammar (which was "one step ahead" of the Bard)? :sweat: — 180 Proof

Har de har har! Very funny! :smirk:

Mathematics isn't just grammar, is it? :chin:

The math models seem to correspond one-to-one with the physical world. That's uncanny if you ask me.