Post-reductionist: …well, I don’t know what to write here to pass the ITT.
I can’t speak for the post-reductionist view in general. But I can name one angle:
Atoms aren’t any more real than apples. What you’re observing is that in theory the map using atoms can derive apples, but not the other way around. Which is to say, the world you build out of atoms (plus other stuff) is a strictly richer ontology — in theory.
But in a subtle way, even that claim about richer ontology is false.
In an important way, atoms are made of apples (plus other stuff). We use metaphors to extend our intuitions about everyday objects in order to think about… something. It’s not that atoms are really there. It’s that we use this abstraction of “atom” in order to orient to a quirky thing reality does. And we build that abstraction out of our embodied interactions with things like apples.
Said more simply: infants & toddlers don’t encounter atoms. They encounter apples. That’s the kind of thing they use to build maps of atoms later on.
This is why quantum mechanics comes across as “weird”. Reality doesn’t actually behave like objects that are interacting when you look closely at it. That’s more like an interface human minds construct. The interface breaks down upon inspection, kind of like how icons on a screen dissolve if you look at them through a microscope.
(This confusion is embedded in our language so it’s hard to say this point about mental interfaces accurately. E.g., what are “human minds” if objects aren’t actually in the territory? It’s a fake question but I’ve never found a way to dispel it with accurate language. Language assumes thing-ness in order to grammar. It’s like we can only ever talk about maps, where “territory” is a map of… something.)
So really, we already have examples of constructing atoms out of apples (and other things). That’s how we’re able to talk about atoms in the first place! It’s actually the inverse that’s maybe impossible in practice.
(…as you point out! “…a hypothetical superintelligent being with an insane computing capacity (probably would need to exist in a different universe) might be able to describe the apple in the terms of atoms….”)
I think the core issue here is that the standard reductionist view is that maps can be accurate. Whereas my understanding of post-reductionism basically says that “accurate” is a type error arising from a faulty assumption. You can compare two maps and notice if they’re consistent. And you can tell whether using a map helps you navigate. But things get very confusing at a basic philosophical level when you start talking about whether a map accurately describes the territory.
I don’t know if it does. It’s not that kind of shift AFAICT. It strikes me as more like the shift from epicycles to heliocentrism. If I recall right, at the time the point wasn’t that heliocentrism made better predictions. I think it might have made exactly the same predictions at first IIRC. The real impact was something more like the mythic reframe on humanity’s role in the cosmos. It just turned out to generalize better too.
Post-reductionism (as I understand it) is an invitation to not be locked in the paradigm of reductionism. To view reductionism as a tool instead of as a truth. This invites wider perceptions which might, in turn, result in different predictions. Hard to say. But the mythic impact on humanity is still potentially quite large: the current reductionist model lends itself to nihilism, but reality might turn out to be vastly larger than strict reductionism (or maybe any fixed paradigm) can fully handle.
I can’t speak for the post-reductionist view in general. But I can name one angle:
Atoms aren’t any more real than apples. What you’re observing is that in theory the map using atoms can derive apples, but not the other way around. Which is to say, the world you build out of atoms (plus other stuff) is a strictly richer ontology — in theory.
But in a subtle way, even that claim about richer ontology is false.
In an important way, atoms are made of apples (plus other stuff). We use metaphors to extend our intuitions about everyday objects in order to think about… something. It’s not that atoms are really there. It’s that we use this abstraction of “atom” in order to orient to a quirky thing reality does. And we build that abstraction out of our embodied interactions with things like apples.
Said more simply: infants & toddlers don’t encounter atoms. They encounter apples. That’s the kind of thing they use to build maps of atoms later on.
This is why quantum mechanics comes across as “weird”. Reality doesn’t actually behave like objects that are interacting when you look closely at it. That’s more like an interface human minds construct. The interface breaks down upon inspection, kind of like how icons on a screen dissolve if you look at them through a microscope.
(This confusion is embedded in our language so it’s hard to say this point about mental interfaces accurately. E.g., what are “human minds” if objects aren’t actually in the territory? It’s a fake question but I’ve never found a way to dispel it with accurate language. Language assumes thing-ness in order to grammar. It’s like we can only ever talk about maps, where “territory” is a map of… something.)
So really, we already have examples of constructing atoms out of apples (and other things). That’s how we’re able to talk about atoms in the first place! It’s actually the inverse that’s maybe impossible in practice.
(…as you point out! “…a hypothetical superintelligent being with an insane computing capacity (probably would need to exist in a different universe) might be able to describe the apple in the terms of atoms….”)
I think the core issue here is that the standard reductionist view is that maps can be accurate. Whereas my understanding of post-reductionism basically says that “accurate” is a type error arising from a faulty assumption. You can compare two maps and notice if they’re consistent. And you can tell whether using a map helps you navigate. But things get very confusing at a basic philosophical level when you start talking about whether a map accurately describes the territory.
What are the new predictions that post-reductionism makes?
I don’t know if it does. It’s not that kind of shift AFAICT. It strikes me as more like the shift from epicycles to heliocentrism. If I recall right, at the time the point wasn’t that heliocentrism made better predictions. I think it might have made exactly the same predictions at first IIRC. The real impact was something more like the mythic reframe on humanity’s role in the cosmos. It just turned out to generalize better too.
Post-reductionism (as I understand it) is an invitation to not be locked in the paradigm of reductionism. To view reductionism as a tool instead of as a truth. This invites wider perceptions which might, in turn, result in different predictions. Hard to say. But the mythic impact on humanity is still potentially quite large: the current reductionist model lends itself to nihilism, but reality might turn out to be vastly larger than strict reductionism (or maybe any fixed paradigm) can fully handle.
This sounds to me like: “I believe the same things as you do, but on top of that I also believe that you are wrong (but I am not).”
Which in turn sounds like: “I do not want to be associated with you, regardless of how much our specific beliefs match”.