“Emergentism” can only be applied to gearboxes if the irreducibility clause is dropped. The high-level behaviour of a mechanism is always reducible to its the behaviour of its parts.
My point is that depends if by “behaviour” you mean “the characteristics of a single solution” or “the characteristics of solution space”. In the latter case the meaning of “reduction” doesn’t seem unambiguous to me.
The practical debate I have in mind is whether multibody dynamics can answer practical questions about the behaviour of gearboxes under conditions of stochastic or transient excitation with backlash taken into account, the point being that the solution space in such an application can be very large.
In the context of the mind-body problem, the contentious claim of emergentists is that mental properties can;t be reduced to physical properties in principal. There could be any number of in practice problems involved in understanding complex systems in terms of their parts. No actual reductionists think that all sciences should be replaced by particle physics, because they understand these in-practice problems. The contentiousness is all about the in-principle issues.
Reducing to “physical properties” is not necessarily the same as to “the physical properties of the ingredients”. I would have thought physicalists think mental properties can be reduced to physical properties, but reductionists identify these with the physical properties of the ingredients. I suppose one way of looking at it is that when you say “in principle” the principles you refer to are physical principles, whereas when emergentists see obstacles as present “in principle” when certain kinds of complexity are present they are more properly described as mathematical principles.
Mental events can certainly be reduced to physical events, but I would take mental properties to be the properties of the set of all possible such events, and the possibility of connecting these to the properties of the brain’s ingredients even in principle is certainly not self-evident.
Reducing to “physical properties” is not necessarily the same as to “the physical properties of the ingredients”.
Well, no, but reducing to the properties of (and some suitable well behaved set of relations between) the smallest
ingredients is what reductionists mean by reductionism.
I would have thought physicalists think mental properties can be reduced to physical properties, but reductionists identify these with the physical properties of the ingredients
I would have thought reductionists think they can be reduced and identity theorists think they are already identical.
I suppose one way of looking at it is that when you say “in principle” the principles you refer to are physical principles, whereas when emergentists see obstacles as present “in principle” when certain kinds of complexity are present they are more properly described as mathematical principles.
“in principle” means in the absence of de-facto limits in cognitive and/or computational power.
Mental events can certainly be reduced to physical events, but I would take mental properties to be the properties of the set of all possible such events, and the possibility of connecting these to the properties of the brain’s ingredients even in principle is certainly not self-evident.
My point is that depends if by “behaviour” you mean “the characteristics of a single solution” or “the characteristics of solution space”. In the latter case the meaning of “reduction” doesn’t seem unambiguous to me.
The practical debate I have in mind is whether multibody dynamics can answer practical questions about the behaviour of gearboxes under conditions of stochastic or transient excitation with backlash taken into account, the point being that the solution space in such an application can be very large.
In the context of the mind-body problem, the contentious claim of emergentists is that mental properties can;t be reduced to physical properties in principal. There could be any number of in practice problems involved in understanding complex systems in terms of their parts. No actual reductionists think that all sciences should be replaced by particle physics, because they understand these in-practice problems. The contentiousness is all about the in-principle issues.
Reducing to “physical properties” is not necessarily the same as to “the physical properties of the ingredients”. I would have thought physicalists think mental properties can be reduced to physical properties, but reductionists identify these with the physical properties of the ingredients. I suppose one way of looking at it is that when you say “in principle” the principles you refer to are physical principles, whereas when emergentists see obstacles as present “in principle” when certain kinds of complexity are present they are more properly described as mathematical principles.
Mental events can certainly be reduced to physical events, but I would take mental properties to be the properties of the set of all possible such events, and the possibility of connecting these to the properties of the brain’s ingredients even in principle is certainly not self-evident.
Well, no, but reducing to the properties of (and some suitable well behaved set of relations between) the smallest ingredients is what reductionists mean by reductionism.
I would have thought reductionists think they can be reduced and identity theorists think they are already identical.
“in principle” means in the absence of de-facto limits in cognitive and/or computational power.
Errrr...you believe in Token Identity but not Type Identity???