I call them bulshiting because you are characterizing them as being devised to gather approval from a jury who doesn't care one bit about their soundness and validity, because they purport to support preconceived notions uncritically accepted by this jury. — Pierre-Normand

Nice try. Laughing at solipsism does no imply one is doesn't care one bit about their soundness and validity.

OK, so your view is that he's just pretending to advance rational arguments in favor of reductionism but he's merely bulshiting. — Pierre-Normand

You can offer rational arguments, but in many areas of life they are never airtight. People at the caliber of Weinberg know this. The gaps that can be attacked I just call them defects. You call them bullshit.

If Weinberg doesn't recognize them to be defects, then what relevance does this have to your assessment of his argument? — Pierre-Normand

The similarity of his arguments to ones that would be used to defend naturalism.

If Weinberg doesn't recognize them to be defects, then what relevant does this have to your assessment of his argument? Are *you* now acknowledging that Weinberg's reductionism is defective? — Pierre-Normand

Naturalism is also defective. But you are still going to choose the soup. He is pleading at a court that doesn't have philosophers in the jury. The same jury that would laugh at solipsism.

It didn't seem to me that Weinberg believes his own brand of 'convergence-of-explanatory-arrows' reductionism to suffer from structural defects. Did you see him express self-doubts that I may have missed somewhere in those two book chapters? — Pierre-Normand

If the defects are the same as those of naturalism, he would not consider them defects. There is no conclusive argument against solipsism but we feel free to ignore it.

Yes, because he believes naturalism (construed as the rejection of magical thinking cum super-naturalism) to entail 'reductionism' — Pierre-Normand

Wrong. Not entailment. Structural similarity. Naturalism suffers from the same structural defects as reductionism.

What if I was using naturalism as a way to probe what counts as a valid defence in your eyes and do the same for Weinberg's reductionism? — Frederick KOH

BTW, I think this is what Weinberg was trying to do with the soup and touch story.

No. I've carefully read three book chapters and attempted enough explanations of what Weinberg's main argument is, and why I think it is unsound. My views didn't change in spite of the fact that I tried to meet you mid-way though following your numerous side tracks. Now it's your turn to explain what you take Weinberg's main argument to be and why you take this argument not to be invalidated by my challenges. — Pierre-Normand

Is naturalism any better defended?

I don't know what your defences are. They changed enough that I felt a need to ask for a synthesis. — Frederick KOH

This suggests one. It doesn't need a defence for the same reason that naturalism doesn't.

Do it, then. Discussions would be much easier if you would lay your card down on the table, as I do. — Pierre-Normand

I don't know what your defences are. They changed enough that I felt a need to ask for a synthesis.

You are seemingly trying to saddle with beliefs in radical relativism, magical thinking, or some such. — Pierre-Normand

Showing that something is a presupposition doesn't make the opposite true. It only makes the burden of consistency heavier.

Basically, all you are suggesting here is that if my epistemic powers are fallible then that entails that anything that I now believe to be true could be shown to me to be false. The response to this argument is either to acknowledge it as such and endorse a form of radical skepticism or, maybe, counter it with something like McDowell's epistemological disjunctivism. I would favor the latter, but it could be the topic of another thread on epistemology. I don't see the relevance of this to our discussion of Weinberg's reductionism. — Pierre-Normand

What if I was using naturalism as a way to probe what counts as a valid defence in your eyes and do the same for Weinberg's reductionism?

I am sorry to say but your posts would resemble Trump's tweets rather more if they were just a bit longer and better articulated. — Pierre-Normand

:-O

Laying bare your presuppositions is all I did O:)

I did it twice already. — Pierre-Normand

How did it resolve the difference between

this:
It is the lack of confidence that there might be a naturalistic (i.e. non-supernatural) explanation of the healing power the King's Trough that undermines our faith in the genuineness of the phenomenon. In the case of the chicken soup, it is easier to imagine a naturalistic explanation. Such an explanation no doubt will make reference to some systemic effect of some ingredient in the soup on human physiology (or bacterial physiology).


and this:
The belief in the power of the King's touch would be one the the things this culture is wrong about. It may even be the case that the widespread wrong belief it is false by that's cultures own lights. (A majority of people flouting a norm doesn't make it not a norm).

So it could turn out that the culture that does not recognize the naturalistic/non-naturalistic distinction might end up convincing you of its point of view. What happens to your original response to the soup and touch then?

We have gotten from this:

It is the lack of confidence that there might be a naturalistic (i.e. non-supernatural) explanation of the healing power the King's Trough that undermines our faith in the genuineness of the phenomenon. In the case of the chicken soup, it is easier to imagine a naturalistic explanation. Such an explanation no doubt will make reference to some systemic effect of some ingredient in the soup on human physiology (or bacterial physiology). — Pierre-Normand

To this:

The belief in the power of the King's touch would be one the the things this culture is wrong about. It may even be the case that the widespread wrong belief it is false by that's cultures own lights. (A majority of people flouting a norm doesn't make it not a norm). — Pierre-Normand

Would you agree that they are different enough for a synthesis to be helpful?

Instead of a reply why not reformulate your response to Weinberg's chicken soup and the king's touch based on what has been exchanged so far.

What is it that I presupposed? — Pierre-Normand

How do you apply a distinction to practices within culture that does not recognize it (the distinction) without privileging you own?

That seems a bit pointless, as well as off topic (for this thread, anyway). Each human culture embodies wisdom about some things and misconceptions or blindness about others. — Pierre-Normand

No, there is a chain from this that leads all the way to chicken soup and the king's touch. That is one of the ways Weinberg explained his reductionism.

I didn't make any claim regarding the comparative merits of human cultures. — Pierre-Normand

Presuppose rather than claim.

When they explain a sickness by reference to the ingestion of some harmful plant, or the failure of a crop by reference to lack of rain, or why someone fell down because she tripped on a hidden tree root, they manifest a genuine understanding of nature. Those explanations are naturalistic. They may not know why exactly plants need water to survive or why this or that plant is poisonous, and they may be tempted to supply non-naturalistic explanations for those. E.g. they may attribute intentions and powers to gods or to salient features of nature itself. — Pierre-Normand

But naturalistic/non-naturalistic is a distinction our culture makes. You are applying it to practices in theirs. Is our culture privileged?

they've both charitably engaged you, — csalisbury

I'm not used to language like this. Too long in an egalitarian context I suppose.

but you've deflected all their points in a manner most closely reaembling the stereotype of pomo sophistry — csalisbury

Anyone is free to point specific instances and revive them. I have in Pierre's case.

I want to give them a hard target, in this case Steven Weinberg, and see what they really mean in plain language.

My claims was and remains that the King's Touch is a distraction. — Pierre-Normand

No, you used the criteria of whether an explanation was naturalistic:

It is the lack of confidence that there might be a naturalistic (i.e. non-supernatural) explanation of the healing power the King's Trough that undermines our faith in the genuineness of the phenomenon. In the case of the chicken soup, it is easier to imagine a naturalistic explanation. — Pierre-Normand

But then you say

Naturalistic explanation just is one mode of explanation among many others — Pierre-Normand

That being the case, why this mode of explanation and not others?

You can leave the King's touch out of it. Superstition is rampant in both primitive and technologically advanced societies. What is at issue is the reductibility, or lack thereof, of successful explanations -- not illusory ones. — Pierre-Normand

This was not your original response (the one involving naturalistic explanations).
Could you provide a synthesis of this response and the original one?

Of course you can say it, truly. Grounds for functional behaviors of human artifacts, or grounds of human cognitive/social phenomena aren't any less plural than are grounds for natural phenomena. — Pierre-Normand

Then back to the chicken soup and the King's Touch. Why?

That's certainly true. Naturalistic explanation just is one mode of explanation among many others. It does disclose specific empirical domains that aren't cognitively (or technologically) accessible through other means. But some cultures go by without much of it. They still are capable of making objective judgments and to provide varieties of rational explanations of human behaviors, animal behaviors, and natural phenomena -- some of which often elude us for want of familiarity with, and understanding of, untamed environments. — Pierre-Normand

So back to the chicken soup and the King's Touch. Why?

What is at issue in this thread is whether naturalistic grounds for order are plural or whether there might be just one unique fundamental ground for all the areas of orderliness that empirical investigation discloses in nature. Investigation into emergent phenomena -- both within and from physical domains -- seems to reveal pluralism to more sensibly portray nature and our cognitive access to it. This finding also harmonises with what is to be found in social sciences where the phenomena are at least partially constituted by our plural human practices. — Pierre-Normand

Why can't someone say the same thing for grounds in general, natural or not?

This may be because we like to disclose order in nature, and disclosing pockets of order often affords opportunities for prediction and control within the empirical/technological domains thus disclosed. This satisfies both out thirst for theoretical knowledge and our needs for security (e.g. reliably finding food in the future). — Pierre-Normand

But these things are achieved by even cultures that don't privilege naturalistic explanations.

It is the lack of confidence that there might be a naturalistic (i.e. non-supernatural) explanation of the healing power the King's Trough that undermines our faith in the genuineness of the phenomenon. — Pierre-Normand

What is behind this privileging of naturalistic explanations?

Not any more, they're not. — Wayfarer

The sentence after the one you quoted is the one that matters.

That's why Weinberg didn't get more specific than "the fundamental principles of physics". There are people trying to win prizes by replacing or radically altering those principles.

And the reason that is never silly, is because God's Laws have now been replaced by The Laws of Physics, and God has become a ghost in his own machine. Amen. — Wayfarer

Except that scientists are the opposite of priests. The greatest honours go to the scientists who overthrow the most established "Laws". That is why that is never silly.

he believes then all to be less "fundamental" than particle physics. — Pierre-Normand

But I was responding to this

It seems not to occur to him that "arrows of explanation" can have a genuine scientific explanatory role even when they don't tend to converge toward a unique "final" theory of everything. — Pierre-Normand

Are they equivalent?

Lack of reduction doesn't amount to magic. — Pierre-Normand

What about the chicken soup? We treat it differently from the King's Touch without having first reduced it.

When a protein acts as a message to a system, is that covered by Weinberg's reductionist ontology? — apokrisis

What is meant by covered? When a protein "acts as a message to a system" the steps can either be broken down into interactions explained by chemistry or there are people trying to do that.

Try "turning sunlight into food". Photosynthesis is one area where these steps have been explained in chemical terms.

Again, what do you mean by "covered".

It seems not to occur to him that "arrows of explanation" can have a genuine scientific explanatory role even when they don't tend to converge toward a unique "final" theory of everything. — Pierre-Normand

In his texts, his actual references to other sciences and the views expressed about them contradict what you say.

Weinberg endorses a form of reductionism that doesn't purport to be pragmatic or methodological but rather amounts to a metaphysical claim regarding "the way the world is" empirically found to be. — Pierre-Normand

He gave an example using chicken soup and the King's touch. Is the outright dismissal of the King's Touch metaphysics?

Weinberg's denial of the autonomy of emergent domains of scientific explanation seems to rest on the belief that the affirmation of such an autonomy amounts to a denial that the laws and principles formulated at this higher-level can have any explanation. — Pierre-Normand

Quote him.

So what is stopping them in your view? It would be possible right? — apokrisis

Using calculations by hand you can't model anything more complicated than the hydrogen atom. Computers are used for more complicated atoms. Higher than that, I defer to Weinberg:

When Edelman says that a person cannot be reduced to molecu-
lar interactions, is he saying anything different (except in degree)
than a botanist or a meteorologist who says that a rose or a thun-
derstorm cannot be reduced to molecular interactions? It may or
may not be silly to pursue reductionist programs of research on
complicated systems that are strongly conditioned by history, like
brains or roses or thunderstorms. What is never silly is the per-
spective, provided by reductionism, that apart from historical ac-
cidents these things ultimately are the way they are because of the
fundamental principles of physics.