On 27 June 2014 10:12, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 6/26/2014 1:49 PM, David Nyman wrote: > >> On 26 June 2014 20:38, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> 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? >>> >> Well, I attempted to address these points in my response to your >> previous post. However, to re-iterate, I'm trying to draw a clear >> distinction between explanatory and ontological assumptions. You may >> personally take the view that in the end all we have is (attempts at) >> explanation and in one sense (that of cognitive closure with respect >> to "ultimate reality") I would agree. Nevertheless, any exhaustively >> reductive explanatory scheme is founded, ex hypothesi, on a bottom-up >> hierarchy, such that the basement level entities and relations, >> whatever we take them to be, are deemed fully adequate to support >> (i.e. to be re-interpreted in terms of) all the levels above them. >> IOW, they comprise, exhaustively, the ontology of the theory. It's in >> that sense that higher levels in the hierarchy are (ontologically) >> fictional; i.e. they are, however useful in an explanatory role, >> surplus to requirements from an ontological perspective. >> >> Not that, in any purely 3p reduction, anything is thereby left out. >> How could it be, if all the higher levels are fully reducible to the >> basement level? It's only when we consider the putative association of >> 1p phenomena with *intermediate* levels of the 3p hierarchy that a gap >> appears, because now we are associating such 1p phenomena with a >> "level", that, whatever its *explanatory* power, has no independent >> *ontological* purchase. Furthermore, at this point it becomes easier >> to see that these explanatory "fictions" are, essentially, artefacts >> > > Ok, thanks. I think I grasp your idea. But ISTM you are taking "fiction" > and "artefact" to mean "untrue" or "non-existent". I don't see that is > justified. Just because a water molecule is made of three atoms doesn't > make it a "fiction". If our perceptions and cognition are successfully > modeled by some theory whose ontology is atoms or arithmetic, then that is > reason to give some credence to that ontology. But I see no reason to say > the perceptions and cognitions are now "untrue" and useless as a basis for > inference simply because they are derivative in some successful model? > > Well my original phrase was "*convenient* fiction" and it was only intended to be considered relevant in a context of what is and isn't fundamental / primitive. Obviously the convenient fictions ARE very convenient, for example I prefer to be thought of as Liz rather than a collection of 10^24 atoms (or an infinite sheaf of computations as the case may be).
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