Ultimately, reductionism is just disbelief in fundamentally complicated things. If “fundamentally complicated” sounds like an oxymoron… well, that’s why I think that the doctrine of non-reductionism is a confusion, rather than a way that things could be, but aren’t.
“Fundamentally complicated” does sound like an oxymoron to me, but I can’t explain why. Could you? What is the contradiction?
Isn’t the contradiction that “complicated” means having more parts/causes/aspects than are readily comprehensible, and “fundamental” things never are complicated, because if they were, they could be broken down into more fundamental things that were less complicated? The fact that things invariably get simpler and more basic as we move closer to the foundational level is in tension with things getting more complicated as we move down.
Eliezer, in Excluding the Supernatural, you wrote:
“Fundamentally complicated” does sound like an oxymoron to me, but I can’t explain why. Could you? What is the contradiction?
Isn’t the contradiction that “complicated” means having more parts/causes/aspects than are readily comprehensible, and “fundamental” things never are complicated, because if they were, they could be broken down into more fundamental things that were less complicated? The fact that things invariably get simpler and more basic as we move closer to the foundational level is in tension with things getting more complicated as we move down.