I am questioning the implicit premise that some kinds of emergent things are “reductively understandable in terms of the parts and their interactions.” I think humans have a basic problem with getting any grasp at all on the idea of things being made of other things, and therefore you have arguments like those of Parmenides, Zeno, etc., which are basically a mirror of modern arguments about reductionism. I would illustrate this with Viliam’s example of the distance between two oranges. I do not see how the oranges explain the fact that they have a distance between them, at all. Consciousness may seem even less intelligible, but this is a difference of degree, not kind.
I am questioning the implicit premise that some kinds of emergent things are “reductively understandable in terms of the parts and their interactions.
It’s not so much some emergent things, for a uniform definiton of “emergent”, as all things that come under a vriant definition of “emergent”.
I think humans have a basic problem with getting any grasp at all on the idea of things being made of other things, and therefore you have arguments like those of Parmenides, Zeno, etc., which are basically a mirror of modern arguments about reductionism
Not really, they are about what we would now call mereology. But as I noted, the two tend to get conflated here.
. I would illustrate this with Viliam’s example of the distance between two oranges. I do not see how the oranges explain the fact that they have a distance between them, at all.
Reductionism is about preserving and operating within a physicalist world view, and physicalism is comfortable with spacial relations and causal interactions as being basic elements or reality. Careful reducitonists say “reducible to its parts, their structure, and their interactions”.
“physicalism is comfortable with spacial relations and causal interactions as being basic elements or reality”
I am suggesting this is a psychological comfort, and there is actually no more reason to be comfortable with those things, than with consciousness or any other properties that combinations have that parts do not have.
I am questioning the implicit premise that some kinds of emergent things are “reductively understandable in terms of the parts and their interactions.” I think humans have a basic problem with getting any grasp at all on the idea of things being made of other things, and therefore you have arguments like those of Parmenides, Zeno, etc., which are basically a mirror of modern arguments about reductionism. I would illustrate this with Viliam’s example of the distance between two oranges. I do not see how the oranges explain the fact that they have a distance between them, at all. Consciousness may seem even less intelligible, but this is a difference of degree, not kind.
It’s not so much some emergent things, for a uniform definiton of “emergent”, as all things that come under a vriant definition of “emergent”.
Not really, they are about what we would now call mereology. But as I noted, the two tend to get conflated here.
Reductionism is about preserving and operating within a physicalist world view, and physicalism is comfortable with spacial relations and causal interactions as being basic elements or reality. Careful reducitonists say “reducible to its parts, their structure, and their interactions”.
“physicalism is comfortable with spacial relations and causal interactions as being basic elements or reality”
I am suggesting this is a psychological comfort, and there is actually no more reason to be comfortable with those things, than with consciousness or any other properties that combinations have that parts do not have.