On 6/26/2014 6:10 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 26 June 2014 00:08, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
You mean reducible in explanation, but not eliminable in fact.
Temperature is explained by kinetic energy of molecules, but you can't
eliminate temperature and keep kinetic energy of molecules. There's a
difference between eliminating in an explanation or description and
eliminating in fact.
I must admit I can't see that personally. If temperature is, in fact,
molecular kinetic energy, then it doesn't actually exist at any level, it's
just a convenient fiction, surely?
Spot on, Liz. Actually, we can consider both or either to be such
fictions, in terms of their mutual reducibility to some (exhaustive
and assumptively irreducible) basement level (string, anyone?). My
point is that the fundamental tenet of any 3p reductionism is
"bottom-up all the way down". If that leads to inconvenient
consequences (not to mention a nasty dose of cognitive dissonance)
don't blame me, blame the assumptions.
I don't understand your point? Are you saying that if there is a basement level
explanation then everything above is a fiction? I think of "fiction" = "untrue". If
there is not a basement, then every explanation is a "fiction", since there is always a
lower level. Or are you claiming there can be no reductive explanations of anything; that
something is always left out?
Brent
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