Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Steve3007]

.Yes.

[Steve3007]

"Heat is molecular motion" = one of the classic (and rare) examples of actual, workable reductionism.

I don't see why you pick that as a particular example of reductionism. And I think you're a bit hard on poor old reductionism. I think we use it every day in almost every aspect of our lives.

[Faustus5]

I don't see why you pick that as a particular example of reductionism. And I think you're a bit hard on poor old reductionism. I think we use it every day in almost every aspect of our lives.

Only if you throw the term around like confetti without any real discipline, to the point where it stops meaning anything important. The technical definition I gave has the advantage of being rigorous and specific, always a plus in philosophy.

BUT--a lot of people prefer to just throw the term around so you have a lot of company and I do not.

[Steve3007]

The technical definition I gave has the advantage of being rigorous and specific, always a plus in philosophy.

This?

Reductionism is the attempt to reconcile and link two separate vocabularies or language-games which address some phenomenon in the natural world. In sound-bite form, reduction requires that you be able to transform one vocabulary into the other either through some sort of logical deduction or through systematic application of scientific “bridge” laws.

If you cannot do this, then while you can certainly claim (if the evidence supports it) that one vocabulary is talking about the same thing as the other but at a different level of analysis, you cannot claim that one reduces to the other. The two vocabularies have a sort of autonomy from one another.

I use it to mean the process of dividing a complex system into relatively simple parts and solving for those parts on the assumption that they can be treated separately from each other or that the interfaces between them are well defined. I guess that counts as the throwing the term around like confetti thing that you mentioned?

[Faustus5]

I use it to mean the process of dividing a complex system into relatively simple parts and solving for those parts on the assumption that they can be treated separately from each other or that the interfaces between them are well defined. I guess that counts as the throwing the term around like confetti thing that you mentioned?

That's more of the layperson's understanding and it's fine if you want to use it that way.

I just tend to prefer the more demanding, technical version I picked up from philosophy of science (I didn't make it up, it's a summary of material I picked up from professional philosophers who care about this sort of thing).

But your approach is favored by more people than mine is!

[Terrapin Station]

.Yes.

Overlooking issues with ostensive definitions in general, especially of abstract concepts, we're on a message board. How is anyone going to provide an ostensive definition?

So with respect to the definitions we can provide on a message board, how would we present a non-circular definition of anything?

[GE Morton]

So your 'ephemeral qualia' can't be detected so far, and its causal relation to physical stuff can't be explained either.

Can't be detected? Of course they can be detected; if they couldn't we wouldn't be discussing them. You can detect your qualia, I can detect mine, but we can't detect each other's. And, yes, they can be explained, but not reductively, and not described.

Its identity with physical stuff is rejected, because of semantics about 'identity', even though all the known correlations point towards their identity.

Covered already. Correlations never "point to identity." They may suggest a causal relationship between two things, but not an identity between them. And, yes, I reject identity "because of semantics." "Identical" means something specific, that certain criteria are satisfied. If you're not using common words per their common semantics then you're uttering gibberish.

Yet somehow, none of this is supposed to be a 'physical stuff - qualia' dualism either, because of substance theory, which isn't even the issue here.

But it is an issue. It is implicit in the concept of dualism.

[GE Morton]

So you claim physical brain cells causally interacting create a separate thing called experience, which is not reducible to brain activity.

Why isn't it reducible?

How do you explain how that can be?

Phenomenal experience is distinguishable from brain activity, but not "separate" from it. It exists only in conjunction with (certain) brain activity (as far as we know), but it may also be produced by non-biological systems with a similar architecture. The two phenomena are intimately connected, just as an EM field is intimately connected with an operating electric motor, but is distinguishable from it.

But "Why isn't it reducible?" is the interesting question. It isn't reducible because qualia and other "mental" phenomena cannot be described in any informative way, and because they are not accessible to public inspection. When that is the case then logical deductions from physical laws to the "mental" phenomena can't be carried out, nor can an extensional equivalence between the terms in the two vocabularies ("mind talk" and "brain talk") --- the bridge laws to which Faustus referred --- be shown. In short, science can't reductively explain non-public phenomena.

And there is another reason, I've suggested before. Our scientific understanding of ourselves and the world is a conceptual model we've constructed over the centuries; it is built upon a cognitive model our brains construct automatically, to integrate all the data being delivered constantly over sensory channels into some coherent whole --- that is the world as we experience it.

So when asking for a reductive explanation of mental phenomena, we're asking science to model the very mechanism by which conceptual models are created. But the mechanisms for creating models must always be more complex that the models it creates. So there will be aspects, features, processes, in play in that mechanism which cannot be captured in any model it creates. It could only be modeled by a system larger than itself.

In other words, scientific theories can't fully explain the mechanisms or processes involved in creating theories. Ouroboros, but the snake can never quite manage to bite its own tail.

[Steve3007]

Overlooking issues with ostensive definitions in general, especially of abstract concepts, we're on a message board. How is anyone going to provide an ostensive definition?

So with respect to the definitions we can provide on a message board, how would we present a non-circular definition of anything?

As I was saying in my last post, I think you already gave an answer to that in your previous reply. I suggested that a definition of physical which can be summarized as "physical = material" doesn't advance the definition of physical much because it just means we then have to define material. You said this:

Aside from that, is the idea here that we're dealing with someone who has no grasp at all re what "physical" might refer to, so we need to find a synonymous phrase that they might have a grasp of, where we are dealing with someone who also has no grasp of what "material," "relations" etc. refers to? If we're dealing with such a person, who would have to be a very odd person, maybe from another planet or some kind of robot or something, then we'd need to proceed by trying to figure out some terms that they do have a grasp on, because otherwise we might exhaust hundreds where the person would say, "I have no idea what that is, either." That could be endless if they're odd enough.

I didn't think the idea was supposed to be that we were supposed to bootstrap, or pretend to bootstrap, someone who has no idea of what any term at all might refer to.

I take that to mean that we, quite reasonably, assume that we're not talking to an alien or a newborn child (or evolution/creation). We're talking to a person who already has years of memories of sensory experiences, and the theories about a real world stemming from those experiences, to draw on. (And they're not playing a rhetorical game of pretending that they don't). That's years of ostensive definitions, one of which is the definition of matter. So even if we're not in that person's presence, and can't literally point to something, we can say something like "Matter. You know. All that stuff around you. That thing sitting in front of you. That thing you're sitting on." We can rely on the fact that lots of "pointing" has already been done in the past. We can refer to past ostensive definitions. But those past ostensive definitions have to be there. As it seems to me that you said in the above, we obviously assume that they are there.

So when I said this:

I don't think many people would suggest that "physical" means "relating to physics as it currently happens to be". As I've said a few times myself, I think the only useful (as opposed to empty/circular) definition of "physical" is something like "the things we propose to be the common causes of, or patterns in, diverse potential and actual sensations.". Since physics is a fundamentally empirical subject, I think a reasonable shorthand is therefore to say that "physical" means "the kinds of things that physics studies".

I think that what you said above confirms it. We define "material" in terms of "the things we propose to be the common causes of, or patterns in, diverse potential and actual sensations.". We assume that, being an adult human being, the person we're talking to has already done that.

[evolution]

Once again, you pose a statement, and again about me, but add a question mark at the end of your statement.

Aside from the typo, it was a question. Here it is without the typo:

Is it not something you're interested in?

What is the word 'it' here in relation to, EXACTLY?

Which one of the at least two possibilities are you referring to?

You're not (philosophically) curious what propositional knowledge is?

Once again, you are proposing knowledge, but with a question mark at the end.

So, which one of the two is it?

Can you answer those questions?

Yes.

I'll answer yours after we're through with this part. Tit for tat.

You will answer my 'what', exactly, after we are through with 'what part', exactly?

[Terrapin Station]

What is the word 'it' here in relation to, EXACTLY?

Philosophical analysis of propositional knowledge.

[Terrapin Station]

We define "material" in terms of "the things we propose to be the common causes of, or patterns in, diverse potential and actual sensations.". We assume that, being an adult human being, the person we're talking to has already done that.

You'd be wrong that that's what everyone is doing. Again, not everything is about epistemology to everyone. Not everything is about us to everyone.

[Steve3007]

You'd be wrong that that's what everyone is doing. Again, not everything is about epistemology to everyone. Not everything is about us to everyone.

I didn't say that "everything is about us to everyone" or anyone. I didn't say "everything is about epistemology to everyone" or to anyone. But I know from past conversations that this is a common theme of yours.

So, to return to this question of yours:

Aside from that, is the idea here that we're dealing with someone who has no grasp at all re what "physical" might refer to, so we need to find a synonymous phrase that they might have a grasp of, where we are dealing with someone who also has no grasp of what "material," "relations" etc. refers to?

As I said, the answer is, no. We're not dealing with someone who has no grasp at all re what "physical" or "material" might refer to.

How have they gained a grasp of what those terms refer to?

[Terrapin Station]

Aside from that, ostensive definitions, insofar as they function as definitions, are still circular. If the definiens isn't the same as the definiendum, just expressed another way, so that both refer to each other, it's not a definition, it's something else. If we give something that's just an example of what we're referring to, we're not giving a definition.

So ostension only works for definition's sake--that is, so that it's literally a definiens for the definiendum--when what we're pointing at identical to and the entirety of what we're referring to with the term in question. And if we pointed to the same thing and said, "What's that?" Then we could give the term in response. So that's still circular, as definitions must be if they're to be definitions. Circularity isn't a problem with definitions--they're not arguments in support of something; circularity is a necessary feature of definitions.

[Steve3007]

If we give something that's just an example of what we're referring to, we're not giving a definition.

And we're probably not doing anything very useful. But we don't generally do that do we? We point to lots of examples. As many as it takes. The person watching us and listening to us figures out what the examples we're pointing at uniquely have in common and eventually learns to point to new examples, that we haven't yet pointed to, by themselves. If they get it wrong, we correct them. (Have you got kids?)

If I say "what is matter" and you point to a cup and leave it at that, I'm unlikely to get a good sense of what the word "matter" means. But if you said something like "it's everything that you can see and which you can confirm that other people can also see" (in other words you effectively point to everything) that might work better.

What you seem to have done so far is effectively say "What a stupid question! Everyone knows what matter is!" and to further say that anyone who tries to suggest that we learn what things are by seeing them is obsessed with epistemology. Seems odd to me.