Benquo—I still fail to see why you need the concept of a computing machine. Not only does a machine seem adequate but, historically, the machine analogy was in fashion before computers came along (it even motivated the development of computing machines). Mechanical devices offer useful analogies of feedback, control and multi-state systems (at least after the industrial revolution) that can found a materialist conception of mind. Computers offer a better analogy is some ways and a misleading one in others (i.e., the strict software/hardware distinction).
I agree with Eliezer that you need to understand quite a few of the details of a reduction for the reduction to go through. Reductionism is, by definition, a very specific thesis. I think it’s wrong to argue that reduction has to be true on logical grounds; rather reductionism is the position we find ourselves in. Scientists are not systematicists like philosophers; when Galileo measured the acceleration due to Earth’s gravity he gained the ability to predict very many Earth-bound motions but nothing in this simple measurement, or the methods used to obtain it, assured that someday we’d have similar physical laws describing everything from boiling water to thinking.
Where anti-reductionists often go wrong is in arguing that there’s nothing in the scientific method that assures reduction. That may be true but it’s beside the point; it’s the results of science, here in the 21st century, that require reductionism. We have a set of broad and exclusionary existence claims which are, in our local environment at least, settled science. Fuzzy notions of dualistic substances and properties aren’t part of that and don’t get to play.
I would argue, however, that there is a sense in which reduction eliminates anger (and many other common sense psychology properties). A part of how we experience anger, and similar emotional states and cognitive processes, derives from our ignorance of how they work. Emotions, for example, are usually taken to be monolithic and irreducible and part of the experience of a negative emotion such as anger is our lack of control. The more we understand emotions the more we, in a sense, “master” them. With some emotions ignorance of how the state came about is probably the central part of how we experience and sustain them (i.e., existential despair or anguish). When we understand the processes behind our emotions we will probably become better at controlling negative emotions and sustaining positive emotions (at least one hopes).
The same is true of cognitive processes and even perception. My experience of my own perception has been changed from monolithic to aggregate and infallible on studying how perception works. This line of reasoning is actually used by Paul Churchland in Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind to defend his version of eliminative materialism. Far from being a position of despair as opponents often paint it (we can’t explain these things therefore they don’t exist) he argues for replacing common sense understanding with scientific understanding on the grounds that we can enrich our perceptual and conceptual apparatus. (A lot of people take issue with Churchland because of his connectionism but he developed his eliminative materialism separately in this earlier work and I think it’s still applicable if you reject connectionism.)
Benquo—I still fail to see why you need the concept of a computing machine. Not only does a machine seem adequate but, historically, the machine analogy was in fashion before computers came along (it even motivated the development of computing machines). Mechanical devices offer useful analogies of feedback, control and multi-state systems (at least after the industrial revolution) that can found a materialist conception of mind. Computers offer a better analogy is some ways and a misleading one in others (i.e., the strict software/hardware distinction).
I agree with Eliezer that you need to understand quite a few of the details of a reduction for the reduction to go through. Reductionism is, by definition, a very specific thesis. I think it’s wrong to argue that reduction has to be true on logical grounds; rather reductionism is the position we find ourselves in. Scientists are not systematicists like philosophers; when Galileo measured the acceleration due to Earth’s gravity he gained the ability to predict very many Earth-bound motions but nothing in this simple measurement, or the methods used to obtain it, assured that someday we’d have similar physical laws describing everything from boiling water to thinking.
Where anti-reductionists often go wrong is in arguing that there’s nothing in the scientific method that assures reduction. That may be true but it’s beside the point; it’s the results of science, here in the 21st century, that require reductionism. We have a set of broad and exclusionary existence claims which are, in our local environment at least, settled science. Fuzzy notions of dualistic substances and properties aren’t part of that and don’t get to play.
I would argue, however, that there is a sense in which reduction eliminates anger (and many other common sense psychology properties). A part of how we experience anger, and similar emotional states and cognitive processes, derives from our ignorance of how they work. Emotions, for example, are usually taken to be monolithic and irreducible and part of the experience of a negative emotion such as anger is our lack of control. The more we understand emotions the more we, in a sense, “master” them. With some emotions ignorance of how the state came about is probably the central part of how we experience and sustain them (i.e., existential despair or anguish). When we understand the processes behind our emotions we will probably become better at controlling negative emotions and sustaining positive emotions (at least one hopes).
The same is true of cognitive processes and even perception. My experience of my own perception has been changed from monolithic to aggregate and infallible on studying how perception works. This line of reasoning is actually used by Paul Churchland in Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind to defend his version of eliminative materialism. Far from being a position of despair as opponents often paint it (we can’t explain these things therefore they don’t exist) he argues for replacing common sense understanding with scientific understanding on the grounds that we can enrich our perceptual and conceptual apparatus. (A lot of people take issue with Churchland because of his connectionism but he developed his eliminative materialism separately in this earlier work and I think it’s still applicable if you reject connectionism.)