If I may, this is why speaking of reductionism in terms of context invariance can be so powerful: it defines a formal interpretive gesture that doesn't take for granted the 'nature' of the 'stuff' that everything else is being 'reduced' to. Whether it be mind or God's will or primordial stuff, the entire way of thinking is suspect from the get-go. Idealism and base materialism are just two sides of a rotten coin: in each case one aspect of reality is idealised over the rest, granted True Reality or some such nonsense which is more or less the defining gesture of metaphysics as such. Derrida's whole shtick about 'the metaphysics of presence' is about nothing else. In every case, the tangibility, the 'reality' and efficacy of the real, the here and now, is denied and referred to an (transcendent?) elsewhere which is meant to hold the 'key' to everything else.

If I'm feeling particularly 'reductive', the whole history of philosophy is more or less the history of a hatred and fear of the world, an attempt, in its search for 'first principles' and so on, to deny the sticky, messy substance of the world. That's the dark side of what it means to be defined as 'footnotes to Plato'.

Just so reductionism doesn't think it's being picked on... it's a solution to the mind/body problem. Since Leibniz's idea didn't catch on..

How do you explain the causal relationship between mind and body (recalling that physics originally meant body (the way the word is used in medicine... your body vs your mind))

No solution. I figured.

If I'm feeling particularly 'reductive', the whole history of philosophy is more or less the history of a hatred and fear of the world, an attempt, in its search for 'first principles' and so on, to deny the sticky, messy substance of the world. That's the dark side of what it means to be defined as 'footnotes to Plato'. — StreetlightX

This is an appealing idea, but maybe it's an unavoidable result of the nature of philosophy. The very practice of philosophy is a performative repudiation of the messy, sticky world--unless, I suppose, the philosopher is aware of this. Maybe if philosophy can be said to have progressed it's to the extent that it developed this self-awareness.

This is an appealing idea, but maybe it's an unavoidable result of the nature of philosophy. The very practice of philosophy is a performative repudiation of the messy, sticky world--unless, I suppose, the philosopher is aware of this. Maybe if philosophy can be said to have progressed it's to the extent that it developed this self-awareness. — jamalrob

We can rail against philosophy's tendency to reduce everything to some very basic "X" substance. But just as mistakenly, philosophy has a tendency to reduce everything down to "X, Y, Z, and the kitchen sink" explanation of a phenomena and think that by being more detailed in its explanation, it has actually gotten to the root of anything metaphysical, when it actually did not answer anything metaphysical, simply physical or rather simply a model of the physical.

It's not 'hatred and fear of the world' but recognition and acknowledgement that nature doesn't contain its own cause. That is what is behind scepticism of the 'sensory domain' which according to reductionist philosophies is the only reality. The Allegory of the Cave is as apt now as when it was written.

And again, that is not a reductionist explanation. Physicalist reductionism has to be understood historically as having developed as a consequences Cartesian dualism, deism and Protestantism, whereby the 'sense of the spiritual' which pervaded the medieval and ancient 'sacramental worldview' gradually withdrew beyond the sky and into the privacy of individual conscience. All that remained was 'matter in motion' and ultimately explicable in terms of the laws of physics. But that picture too has now been thoroughly superseded, we're only left with the skeleton of the skeleton.

I see two senses of the word reductionism being used here.

One is the familiar one of a reduction to mechanical or atomistic ontological models of reality. The other is the simpler thing of just being the reduction to an ontological model.

So we can oppose reductionism to holism - contrast two different ontological models. Or we can talk about the epistemic fact that all knowledge of the world is a semiotic modelling relation and reductionism is formalising the fact that we seek models to structure our experience in rational ways.

So to reduce in the modelling sense is to break the messy substantial world of given experience apart into theories and measurements - formal ideas and relatively informal acts of inductive confirmation.

Even the naive brain models in this fashion. If a baby sees a dog disappear behind one end of a wall, it will learn to look to the other end in the expectation it will reappear in a moment. So the baby has a theory or idea. And then checks that model against a measurement - the act of watching the other end of the wall in expectation that its idea of the world will be empirically confirmed.

If I'm feeling particularly 'reductive', the whole history of philosophy is more or less the history of a hatred and fear of the world, an attempt, in its search for 'first principles' and so on, to deny the sticky, messy substance of the world. That's the dark side of what it means to be defined as 'footnotes to Plato'. — StreetlightX

But is reductive modelling - the familiar division into generals and particulars, concepts and percepts, theories and measurements - a bad thing or the natural thing?

I argue that this philosophical/scientific practice is simply a formalisation, a conscious refinement, of how minds already work. We break the world apart into its formal structures and material events for a very good reason. This is how modelling works.

And pragmatism accepts the anti-realist epistemic point that to exist in a realm of our own reductive conceptions is as good as it gets. Our view of reality is always trapped inside the model we spin. That is obvious enough when it comes to concepts or ideas - the stuff of theories. But it is also true even of the measurements or confirming impressions.

The baby sees a dog re-emerge as expected and so its belief is confirmed. But is it the same dog? Can this baby yet tell the difference between a dog and a goat? Etc.

Science just goes all the way and constructs theories that are confirmed in terms of numbers - symbols read off dials. The Kantian impossibility of actually grasping the thing in itself is dealt with by reducing even material experience to acts of counting - signs of the theory in mind.

So reductionism in the broad sense is the acceptance that all knowledge is a modelling relation. And that in turn leads to a dichotomy of theory and measurement which is what it is to model. And so reductionism is going to be at its best when taken to its epistemic extreme as it is in scientific reasoning - when experience is fully structured in being fully broken apart into formal concepts and answering acts of measurement.

That's precisely the fear and hatred of the world being spoken about. The idea that somehow, states of nature are more than themselves, that they somehow come from different realm.

It's a simultaneous hatred of the world AND the meaning expressed by it. We ignore what we know about the world (e.g. that our experiences exist and are part of nature, that states of the world cause each other) and try to make it about a fiction instead (the "final cause" outside the world).

In doing so, we also ignore the infinte. The unity of the world, which is necessary, is misread as a finite state given by final cause (e.g. God, the transedencent)-- such that we think unity isn't there ( Nihilism) unless final cause if there to add it in.

The Allegory of The Cave is only an apt description of ignorance of the world. And it that ignorance of the world that immaterialism, with its reduction of the world to fiction, covets.

If I may, this is why speaking of reductionism in terms of context invariance can be so powerful: it defines a formal interpretive gesture that doesn't take for granted the 'nature' of the 'stuff' that everything else is being 'reduced' to. Whether it be mind or God's will or primordial stuff, the entire way of thinking is suspect from the get-go. Idealism and base materialism are just two sides of a rotten coin: in each case one aspect of reality is idealised over the rest — StreetlightX

I think it's right that the human tendency to reduce everything to some ultimate substance is suspect. "Mind", "God" and "primordial stuff" cannot be thought as the same. We can imagine that ultimately "all is one", but that 'oneness' cannot be any category known to the discursive intellect.

So, I would not agree with you, that "Idealism and base materialism are just two sides of a rotten coin", but I can agree with you that "in each case one aspect of reality is idealised over the rest". I would say instead that idealism and materialism are two sides of one true coin, and that when only one side is seen, the trouble begins.

The flip side of reductionism is eliminativism, so it won't do to eliminate the mind, God or primordial stuff, because to do any of that kind of eliminating is to begin to become fixated on one side of the coin. The wholism of the materialism/idealism coin is thus the exemplar for the wholism of the reductive/ expansive coin, the analytic/ synthetic coin, the eliminative/intuitive coin, the exclusive/ inclusive coin, and so on.

So, there is nothing wrong with the reductive, analytic, eliminative and exclusive tendencies, or with the expansive, synthetic, intuitive, inclusive tendencies, per se the problems start when one set of principles is thrown away and the other clung to.

If I'm feeling particularly 'reductive', the whole history of philosophy is more or less the history of a hatred and fear of the world, an attempt, in its search for 'first principles' and so on, to deny the sticky, messy substance of the world. That's the dark side of what it means to be defined as 'footnotes to Plato'. — StreetlightX

I would say that hatred and fear of the world manifests in the tendency I mentioned above; the tendency to throw away one set of principles and cling to the other. Modern scientistic thinking wants to eliminate religion and spirituality and reduce what is thought to be real to the sensory domain of perceptible objects; it has forgotten to listen to the 'still, small voice" of intuition. This 'forgetting' or 'ignore-ance' is a manifestation of a fear that there might be an order beyond what may be grasped by the discursive mind, the elimination is done for the sake of tidiness and a sense of intellectual security. Now, I would say the physical world is a manifestation of the spiritual world, or even better that it just is the spiritual world (although not all of it) but that belief is based on intuition and it cannot be tidily formulated; but I really have no argument that could convince you of that. The deepest ontological commitments that people hold, whatever they might be, are decidedly not arrived at by argument.

You mentioned Derrida; I think Derrida, as interesting and inventive as some of his ideas are, is an arch eliminator; his project consisted in the elimination of the metaphysics of presence and the semantics of inherent meaning, after all! This boldly attempted elimination of his seems to me to be the manifestation of a desire to apply a discursive antiseptic to the "sticky messy substance of the world"; or at least the part of the 'sticky mess' represented by spiritual yearning, intuitive insight and mystical experience.

leave no space for the mystical woo. — jamalrob

The very employment of the materialist catch cry "mystical woo" is characteristic of the chauvinistically and mindlessly bad form of reductionism represented by scientistic thinking.

In fact modern science and materialism really have nothing of relevance to say about the spiritual or the mystical; and that is as it should be.

Derrida is really an advocate for metaphysics. What he argues against is reduction of the world and logic to a particular discouse. The major point of his philosophy is to stop confusing the presence of our metaphysics with the full extent of meaning and the world. His project is really to eliminate reductionism, a metaphysical point: no instance of discourse gives the entirety of meaning or the world.

Maybe, but I'm quite happy to use it too.

Only because you maintain the reductionism of the elimativism/idealism, rather than moving on to a different metaphysic, one which has no interest in saying "the other side" has nothing to do with meaning.

"Mystical woo" only amounts to reductionism because your metaphysics are still locked into the idea that identifying causes of the world means saying nothing else is relevant.

Yes, I agree that he may be taken that way; and his later involvement with apophatic theology may attest to that dimension of this thought. In fact, I would say there is a tension in his thought, precisely because it seems to pull in both directions.

Sorry, no idea what you are trying to say here.

Only because there is a certain reductionism within Derrida's thought. In the eagerness to avoid reduction of meaning to anyone discouse, it leaves too little behind of any discouse. To say that any discouse has specific relevance, even Derrida's own, is regarded as ignorance of reductionism.

Here we may turn Derrida's (apparent) discursive scepticism against him. If we take his challenge to discouse literally, we are supposedly never right to insist on the meaning of one discouse over another, even his own. Thus, Derrida's metaphysic tends not to be-- by both his critics and supporters-- described in terms of what it's trying to get at (no discouse is exaustive), but rather as a supposed mess of contradiction which says our discourses have no meaning.

How is it reductionism to say, for example, that "mystical woo" isn't responsible for consciousness? If I say that states of experience result out of states of the body interacting with the environment, what has I left out? What truth am I missing?

You are leaving out the fact that not all states of consciousness are in the form of "states of the body interacting with the environment" and/or the fact that that is not the only way we are able to think about it. To think states of consciousness as states of the body interacting with the environment is merely one way to characterize consciousness, that may be useful for certain purposes of study but has no provenance beyond that. To say that it is the only right or valid way to think about consciousness is to be tendentiously reductive.

So, if meaning and metaphysics cannot be determined we are left to rely on... what... intuition?

And so reductionism is going to be at its best when taken to its epistemic extreme as it is in scientific reasoning - when experience is fully structured in being fully broken apart into formal concepts and answering acts of measurement. — apokrisis

It's when models cannot be made near the fringes of thought that the models break down.

It's not 'hatred and fear of the world' but recognition and acknowledgement that nature doesn't contain its own cause. That is what is behind scepticism of the 'sensory domain' which according to reductionist philosophies is the only reality. The Allegory of the Cave is as apt now as when it was written. — Wayfarer

If by apt you mean the most irreparably destructive and philosophically regressive force of the last 2000 years, then sure. Hiding a noxious resentment of reality - generally coupled with a healthy hatred for the body, manual labour, temporality, and women (whatever doesn't reek with the stench of socio-economic privilege really) - behind a slogan doesn't make it any less venomous.

I never said any such thing. States of body cause conocious states is what I argued, not that conocious states were states of body.

I'm doing anything but leaving out that which is not states of body. My argument is actually saying states of consciousness are not states of the body-- they are instances of existing conciousness not any part of the body.

This is what I mean about you maintaining reductionism. Like any reductionist ( whether they be materialistic or idealistic), you view the existence of consciousness as nonsensical. So much so that you read any argument about consciousness as reductionist, even when it's exactly the opposite.

Now that this confusion is resolved, I'll ask again: what exactly is missing in an account of conciousness that says states of consciousness (which are NOT a state of the body) result from states of the body interacting with the environment?

What else would we have? Anytime we "derive," we are relying on what we already know-- X must mean Y. We can't "derive" without first knowing something. As such, what we derive is reliant upon the relationship we already know by intuition. We can't get outside what we know (or don't know) to conclude what must be true regardless of knowledge.

It's when models cannot be made near the fringes of thought that the models break down. — schopenhauer1

It is a genuine issue that modelling is procrustean. If you have a hammer, everything is a nail. Existence might be ontically vague, and yet still we want to model it in terms of definite counterfactuals.

So yes, this is an issue. But also - pragmatically - we can be aware of it. Even model it.

That is what science means when crackpots come up with ideas that are "not even wrong". Or they produce theories with too many parameters and so can be adjusted endlessly to fit any data.

I interpreted what you said to mean that states of experience both are bodily states and that they always are of bodily states. What else could "result out of states of the body interacting with the environment" mean?

I know you did. That's my point. You always jump to that reductionist position, even though I hand't argued it at all. The idea consciousness would, itself, be a state of the world is considered impossible.

As for what it could mean, nothing more than the ordinary description of cause and effect: X (body interacting with environment) which then results in a distinct state, which is neither the body or environment (an experience).

It's no different to saying, for example, that letting go of a rock causes it to fall. In that situation there is a cause (hand realising the rock) which results in a distinct effect (the falling rock). Yet, we don't go around saying we don't know how the falling rock is caused, unless we somehow explain how it's the same thing as the hands which released it. Consciousness should be no different.

So, consciousness, or experience, is not a state of the body? What is it then, according to you?

Consciousness. A state of the world that is consciousness. No reductionism. No need to be defined by an other terms.

I've said in the past that people do not take the existence of experiences seriously. This is what I mean. Anyone who thinks there is a "hard problem" thinks considers existence consciousness to be impossible. They either try to reduce to the brain (reductionist materialists) or trying to pose it as a transcendental infinite -- a reduction of the world to meaning-- that has nothing to do with the world (idealists).

But is reductive modelling - the familiar division into generals and particulars, concepts and percepts, theories and measurements - a bad thing or the natural thing?

I argue that this philosophical/scientific practice is simply a formalisation, a conscious refinement, of how minds already work. We break the world apart into its formal structures and material events for a very good reason. This is how modelling works. — apokrisis

As we've been through elsewhere, I simply don't put all that much stock into this epistemology. I acknowledge it's usefulness - for the sake of science in particular - but I'm far more interested in other modes of knowledge which of which I think modelling is fundamentally parasitic upon. To use a reference you're familiar with, I take as symptomatic Robert Rosen's point that the very construction of the modelling relation cannot itself be entailed by anything in particular - he refers to it, specifically and often, as an art. This is not an accidental use of the term. As someone who believes in the primacy of the aesthetic as a grounds for knowledge, modelling relations constitute a highly constrained - that is, particular - form of knowledge, whereas my own interests lie in the direction of a more general understanding of what it is to know. We are sensate bodies long before we are inference-mongering, reflexive intellects.

Tied up in this are other, more philosophical considerations too; when you acknowledge the procrustean nature of the modelling relation, part of what this entails is never putting the nature of the 'questioning subject' itself into question. You say that it's enough to be 'aware' of it; I think we can do much more. Philosophy simply has a wider mandate than what is legislated for by science, and I think it's an artificial, artifactual limitation that would seek to constrain it's exploration to modelling relations alone. Not to mention that too often, reductive epistemologies are uncritically and naively projected into the world itself, making it all to easy to mistake method for reality. This is to say nothing of the socio-political and ethical considerations that might come into play with respect to who can be said to legitimately possess knowledge. There are just too many shoals upon which one can wreck oneself if one simply sticks uncritically to modelling relations as a paradigm of knowledge.

Wouldn't Berkeley count?

Not to mention various proposals brought up on these forums.