The short version of reductionism is not, “everything is made up of smaller parts”. I would phrase it this way: “Only simple things exist ontologically. Everything complex is made out of arranging those simple things in particular ways.”
I really feel like this is just a restatement of what I already said. I must have said it badly. Look, I understand this, but the regress of figuring out what the simple, ontological things are can be addressed physically, and many claim that quantum amplitude is the place where the buck stops. I am asking for help in understanding how one can make such a claim, what are its merits and pitfalls, and what are the state of the art aspects of physics that address this question. Do we have reason to suspect that quantum amplitude is the simple thing that exists ontologically or not, and if not, why not?
It is a tricky issue. Really, the only reason to suspect that quantum amplitude is the simple thing that exists ontologically, is that we have no hints (that I know of) that there exists something on an even lower level. It may be that there is something else (and maybe figuring out what this is will help us unify physics) but for the moment, since we don’t have any evidence to suggest that any particular thing is there, we conclude (pending further investigation) that there isn’t anything else there. But, I assign a fairly low probability to this statement, given the history of physics.
Yes, thank you for clearing up your point. I think that @orthonormal hit the nail on the head. What I meant to get at was not that my conversation partners care very much whether we can conclusively say that something does/doesn’t underlie amplitude. It’s more that they have their own favorite phenomena which they want to have similar status as quantum amplitude. It could be the power of prayer, the rightness of a political ideology, etc. They engage in the regress of “well what’s that made out of” only so that when I hit something at the bottom (currently amplitude), then they can say that separate magisteria allows them to claim with equal validity that their favorite phenomena are just like amplitude and are ontologically basic.
Really this about looking at any two phenomena we can observe and saying that there is some finer level that underlies them both and explains them. Many who dispute that want to press you about whatever the limits of knowledge are in physics and then argue that this justifies their metaphysical views that some other thing cannot be reduced.
On a tangent, this makes me wonder what has been said about mathematical models of the levels of abstraction/semantic resolution of reality. Is there any kind of meaningful total ordering of these levels? Could the different levels of reductionism be partially ordered? Are they observer-dependent. These are interesting questions.
Also, see billswift’s comment above where he suggests that my statement of exactly this claim is inadequate: (link)
My way of phrasing it is “everything that exists does so by virtue of being made up of simpler constituent things”, obviously pending whatever is “ontologically basic”, which is what my whole problem is.
The short version of reductionism is not, “everything is made up of smaller parts”. I would phrase it this way: “Only simple things exist ontologically. Everything complex is made out of arranging those simple things in particular ways.”
I really feel like this is just a restatement of what I already said. I must have said it badly. Look, I understand this, but the regress of figuring out what the simple, ontological things are can be addressed physically, and many claim that quantum amplitude is the place where the buck stops. I am asking for help in understanding how one can make such a claim, what are its merits and pitfalls, and what are the state of the art aspects of physics that address this question. Do we have reason to suspect that quantum amplitude is the simple thing that exists ontologically or not, and if not, why not?
It is a tricky issue. Really, the only reason to suspect that quantum amplitude is the simple thing that exists ontologically, is that we have no hints (that I know of) that there exists something on an even lower level. It may be that there is something else (and maybe figuring out what this is will help us unify physics) but for the moment, since we don’t have any evidence to suggest that any particular thing is there, we conclude (pending further investigation) that there isn’t anything else there. But, I assign a fairly low probability to this statement, given the history of physics.
Yes, thank you for clearing up your point. I think that @orthonormal hit the nail on the head. What I meant to get at was not that my conversation partners care very much whether we can conclusively say that something does/doesn’t underlie amplitude. It’s more that they have their own favorite phenomena which they want to have similar status as quantum amplitude. It could be the power of prayer, the rightness of a political ideology, etc. They engage in the regress of “well what’s that made out of” only so that when I hit something at the bottom (currently amplitude), then they can say that separate magisteria allows them to claim with equal validity that their favorite phenomena are just like amplitude and are ontologically basic.
Really this about looking at any two phenomena we can observe and saying that there is some finer level that underlies them both and explains them. Many who dispute that want to press you about whatever the limits of knowledge are in physics and then argue that this justifies their metaphysical views that some other thing cannot be reduced.
On a tangent, this makes me wonder what has been said about mathematical models of the levels of abstraction/semantic resolution of reality. Is there any kind of meaningful total ordering of these levels? Could the different levels of reductionism be partially ordered? Are they observer-dependent. These are interesting questions.
Also, see billswift’s comment above where he suggests that my statement of exactly this claim is inadequate: (link)
My way of phrasing it is “everything that exists does so by virtue of being made up of simpler constituent things”, obviously pending whatever is “ontologically basic”, which is what my whole problem is.