The Great Reductionist Project can be seen as figuring out how to express meaningful sentences in terms of a >combination of physical references (statements whose truth-value is determined by a truth-condition directly >correspnding to the real universe we’re embedded in) and logical references (valid implications of premises, >or elements of models pinned down by axioms); where both physical references and logical references are to >be described ‘effectively’ or ‘formally’, in computable or logical form. (I haven’t had time to go into this last part >but it’s an already-popular idea in philosophy of computation.)
And the Great Reductionist Thesis can be seen as the proposition that everything meaningful can be >expressed this way eventually.
Which, to my admittedly rusty knowledge of mid 20th century philosophy, sounds extremely similar to the anti-metaphysics position of Carnap circa 1950. His work on Ramsey sentences, if I recall, was an attempt to reduce mixed statements including theoretical concepts (“appleness”) to a statement consisting purely of Logical and Observational Terms. I’m fairly sure I saw something very similar to your writings in his late work regarding Modal Logic, but I’m clearly going to have to dig up the specific passage.
Amusingly, this endeavor also sounds like your arch-nemesis David Chalmers’ new project, Constructing the World. Some of his moderate responses to various philosophical puzzles may actually be quite useful to you in dismissing sundry skeptical objections to the reductive project; from what I’ve seen, his dualism isn’t indispensable to the interesting parts of the work.
Just to say that in general, apart from the stuff about consciousness, which I disagree with but think is interesting, I think that Chalmers is one of the best philosophers alive today. Seriously, he does a lot of good work.
Well, I was specifically thinking of this passage
Which, to my admittedly rusty knowledge of mid 20th century philosophy, sounds extremely similar to the anti-metaphysics position of Carnap circa 1950. His work on Ramsey sentences, if I recall, was an attempt to reduce mixed statements including theoretical concepts (“appleness”) to a statement consisting purely of Logical and Observational Terms. I’m fairly sure I saw something very similar to your writings in his late work regarding Modal Logic, but I’m clearly going to have to dig up the specific passage.
Amusingly, this endeavor also sounds like your arch-nemesis David Chalmers’ new project, Constructing the World. Some of his moderate responses to various philosophical puzzles may actually be quite useful to you in dismissing sundry skeptical objections to the reductive project; from what I’ve seen, his dualism isn’t indispensable to the interesting parts of the work.
Just to say that in general, apart from the stuff about consciousness, which I disagree with but think is interesting, I think that Chalmers is one of the best philosophers alive today. Seriously, he does a lot of good work.
He also reads LessWrong, I think.
I am about 90% certain that he is djc.
I’d agree; the link to philpapers (a Chalmers project), claiming to be a pro, having access to leading decision theorists—all consistent.
It’s either Chalmers or a deliberate impersonator. ‘DJC’ stands for ‘David John Chalmers.’