By far the best definition I’ve ever heard of the supernatural is Richard Carrier’s: A “supernatural” explanation appeals to ontologically basic mental things, mental entities that cannot be reduced to nonmental entities.
Physicalism, materialism, empiricism, and reductionism are clearly similar ideas, but not identical. Carrier’s criterion captures something about a supernatural ontology, but nothing about supernatural epistemology. Surely the central claim of natural epistemology is that you have to look...you can’t rely on faith , or clear ideas implanted in our minds by God.
it seems that we have very good grounds for excluding supernatural explanations a priori
But making reductionism aprioristic arguably makes it less scientific...at least, what you gain in scientific ontology, you lose in scientific epistemology.
I mean, what would the universe look like if reductionism were false
We wouldn’t have reductive explanations of some apparently high level phenomena … Which we don’t.
I previously defined the reductionist thesis as follows: human minds create multi-level models of reality in which high-level patterns and low-level patterns are separately and explicitly represented. A physicist knows Newton’s equation for gravity, Einstein’s equation for gravity, and the derivation of the former as a low-speed approximation of the latter. But these three separate mental representations, are only a convenience of human cognition. It is not that reality itself has an Einstein equation that governs at high speeds, a Newton equation that governs at low speeds, and a “bridging law” that smooths the interface. Reality itself has only a single level, Einsteinian gravity. It is only the Mind Projection Fallacy that makes some people talk as if the higher levels could have a separate existence—different levels of organization can have separate representations in human maps, but the territory itself is a single unified low-level mathematical object. Suppose this were wrong.
Suppose that the Mind Projection Fallacy was not a fallacy, but simply true.
Note that there are four possibilities here...
I assume a one level universe, all further details are correct.
I assume a one level universe, some details may be incorrect
I assume a multi level universe, all further details are correct.
I assume a multi level universe, some details may be incorrect.
How do we know that the MPF is actually fallacious, and what does it mean anyway?
If all forms of mind projection projection are wrong, then reductive physicalism is wrong, because quarks, or whatever is ultimately real, should not be mind projected, either.
If no higher level concept should be mind projected, then reducible higher level concepts shouldn’t be …which is not EY’s intention.
Well, maybe irreducible high level concepts are the ones that shouldn’t be mind projected.
That certainly amounts to disbelieving in non reductionism...but it doesn’t have much to do with mind projection. If some examples of mind projection are acceptable , and the unacceptable ones coincide with the ones forbidden by reductivism, then MPF is being used as a Trojan horse for reductionism.
And if reductionism is an obvious truth , it could have stood on its own as apriori truth.
Suppose that a 747 had a fundamental physical existence apart from the quarks making up the 747. What experimental observations would you expect to make, if you found yourself in such a universe?
Science isn’t 100% observation,it’s a mixture of observation and explanation.
A reductionist ontology is a one level universe: the evidence for it is the success of reductive explanation , the ability to explain higher level phenomena entirely in terms of lower level behaviour. And the existence of explanations is aposteriori, without being observational data, in the usual sense. Explanations are abductive,not inductive or deductive.
As before, you should expect to be able to make reductive explanations of all high level phenomena in a one level universe....if you are sufficiently intelligent. It’s like the Laplace’s Demon illustration of determinism,only “vertical”. If you find yourself unable to make reductive explanations of all phenomena, that might be because you lack the intelligence , or because you are in a non reductive multi level universe or because you haven’t had enough time...
Either way, it’s doubtful and aposteriori, not certain and apriori.
If you can’t come up with a good answer to that, it’s not observation that’s ruling out “non-reductionist” beliefs, but a priori logical incoherence”
I think I have answered that. I don’t need observations to rule it out. Observations-rule it-in, and incoherence-rules-it-out aren’t the only options.
People who live in reductionist universes cannot concretely envision non-reductionist universes.
Which is a funny thing to say, since science was non-reductionist till about 100 years ago.
One of the clinching arguments for reductionism.was the Schrödinger equation, which showed that in principle, the whole of chemistry is reducible to physics, while the rise of milecular biology showeds th rreducxibility of Before that, educators would point to the de facto hierarchy of the sciences—physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology—as evidence of a multi-layer reality.
Unless the point is about “concretely”. What does it mean to concretely envision a reductionist universe? Pehaps it means you imagine all the prima facie layers, and also reductive explanations linking them. But then the non-reductionist universe would require less envisioning, because byit’s the same thing without the bridging explanations! Or maybe it means just envisioing huge arrays of quarks. Which you can’t do. The reductionist world view , in combination with the limitations of the brain, implies that you pretty much have to use higher level, summarised concepts...and that they are not necessarily wrong.
But now we get to the dilemma: if the staid conventional normal boring understanding of physics and the brain is correct, there’s no way in principle that a human being can concretely envision, and derive testable experimental predictions about, an alternate universe in which things are irreducibly mental. Because, if the boring old normal model is correct, your brain is made of quarks, and so your brain will only be able to envision and concretely predict things that can predicted by quarks.
“Your brain is made of quarks” is aposteriori, not apriori.
Your brain being made of quarks doesn’t imply anything about computability. In fact, the computatbolity of the ultimately correct version of quantum physics is an open question.
Incomputability isn’t the only thing that implies irreducibility, as @ChronoDas points out.
Non reductionism is conceivable, or there would be no need to argue for reductionism.
Physicalism, materialism, empiricism, and reductionism are clearly similar ideas, but not identical. Carrier’s criterion captures something about a supernatural ontology, but nothing about supernatural epistemology. Surely the central claim of natural epistemology is that you have to look...you can’t rely on faith , or clear ideas implanted in our minds by God.
But making reductionism aprioristic arguably makes it less scientific...at least, what you gain in scientific ontology, you lose in scientific epistemology.
We wouldn’t have reductive explanations of some apparently high level phenomena … Which we don’t.
Note that there are four possibilities here...
I assume a one level universe, all further details are correct.
I assume a one level universe, some details may be incorrect
I assume a multi level universe, all further details are correct.
I assume a multi level universe, some details may be incorrect.
How do we know that the MPF is actually fallacious, and what does it mean anyway?
If all forms of mind projection projection are wrong, then reductive physicalism is wrong, because quarks, or whatever is ultimately real, should not be mind projected, either.
If no higher level concept should be mind projected, then reducible higher level concepts shouldn’t be …which is not EY’s intention.
Well, maybe irreducible high level concepts are the ones that shouldn’t be mind projected.
That certainly amounts to disbelieving in non reductionism...but it doesn’t have much to do with mind projection. If some examples of mind projection are acceptable , and the unacceptable ones coincide with the ones forbidden by reductivism, then MPF is being used as a Trojan horse for reductionism.
And if reductionism is an obvious truth , it could have stood on its own as apriori truth.
Science isn’t 100% observation,it’s a mixture of observation and explanation.
A reductionist ontology is a one level universe: the evidence for it is the success of reductive explanation , the ability to explain higher level phenomena entirely in terms of lower level behaviour. And the existence of explanations is aposteriori, without being observational data, in the usual sense. Explanations are abductive,not inductive or deductive.
As before, you should expect to be able to make reductive explanations of all high level phenomena in a one level universe....if you are sufficiently intelligent. It’s like the Laplace’s Demon illustration of determinism,only “vertical”. If you find yourself unable to make reductive explanations of all phenomena, that might be because you lack the intelligence , or because you are in a non reductive multi level universe or because you haven’t had enough time...
Either way, it’s doubtful and aposteriori, not certain and apriori.
I think I have answered that. I don’t need observations to rule it out. Observations-rule it-in, and incoherence-rules-it-out aren’t the only options.
Which is a funny thing to say, since science was non-reductionist till about 100 years ago.
One of the clinching arguments for reductionism.was the Schrödinger equation, which showed that in principle, the whole of chemistry is reducible to physics, while the rise of milecular biology showeds th rreducxibility of Before that, educators would point to the de facto hierarchy of the sciences—physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology—as evidence of a multi-layer reality.
Unless the point is about “concretely”. What does it mean to concretely envision a reductionist universe? Pehaps it means you imagine all the prima facie layers, and also reductive explanations linking them. But then the non-reductionist universe would require less envisioning, because byit’s the same thing without the bridging explanations! Or maybe it means just envisioing huge arrays of quarks. Which you can’t do. The reductionist world view , in combination with the limitations of the brain, implies that you pretty much have to use higher level, summarised concepts...and that they are not necessarily wrong.
“Your brain is made of quarks” is aposteriori, not apriori.
Your brain being made of quarks doesn’t imply anything about computability. In fact, the computatbolity of the ultimately correct version of quantum physics is an open question.
Incomputability isn’t the only thing that implies irreducibility, as @ChronoDas points out.
Non reductionism is conceivable, or there would be no need to argue for reductionism.