Doug, > One of the foremost historical reductionists (Descarte) twice > demonstrated blind egotism in his "Reductionist Duck" postulate, as follows:
Again, Descartes was at the beginning of science. He wrote after a thousand years dominion of the Catholic Church in Europe. Do not hold his errors against the method of reductionism. Errors are being made, and are currently being made. That has nothing to do with reductionism, but with the scientific method (and metaphysical assumptions (which I find of the utmost importance, as they influence our theory building)). > I'm not sure which I find most disappointing: the fact of the egoism > amply demonstrated by this postulate, or the blind acceptance of it by > so many other modern "reductionists". Do we have the right to be "disappointed" in the errors of our ancestors? When I look at the insight of Parmenides or Democritus, for instance, I can't but be awed with how far they went with so little data. Who am I to hold their errors against them? I am far more disappointed about what some modern scientists proclaim, in an age where not knowing can not so easily be excused. > As to your question regarding a non-egoistic explanation: recognition > of the fact that we simply do not yet understand enough about the > complexities of organic intelligence to be making stupid, simplistic > reductionist claims about its nature would be a good start... OK, so in your symbol space reductionism is tied to "stupid" and "simplistic" - it is hard to argue when the term has so bad connotations in your mind. Certainly I can't argue in a few words without being misunderstood. So I try it this way: Have you read: Brian Cantwell Smiths's "On the Origin of Objects"? http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Objects-Bradford-Books/dp/0262692090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220818482&sr=8-1 While he and I have subtle metaphysical disagreements, his book is well in accord with the position I hold in most things epistemological and ontological (I disagree in some of the conclusions he draws). The book is somewhat of a secret classic in cognitive science/AI, probably many FRIAMers know it. A first approach to what reductionism really is and not what some detractors may hold can be found here (OB post): http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/03/reductionism.html As to the "basic level of reality" mentioned in the post above, I think indeed that there is only one basic level (one world assumption - this does not mean privileging one level, here I disagree a bit with the OB post and am more in line with B.Cantwell Smith, but again, the points are subtle and would lead to far in this little post), and that the way to reconcile this with explanatory higher levels of abstraction is simply that some phenomena are better described in higher-level terms _for us humans_; but what should reality care what is good for humans? Ontological reductionism is the only serious position IMHO, and all successes by complexity science actually affirm this position (computational models etc). Many FRIAMers, I gather (from reading the list), share a computer science background. Computer Science has the most wonderful concepts to understand what reductionism is about. Think about the hierarchy from electrons to machine language to assembly to C to higher level languages like JAVA and Python and what have you. Think about OOP where you model domains with, ideally, the machine not shining through any more because that would interfere with the modelling. Surely, nobody supposes that when you model something in OOP a new causal domain arises apart from the electrons shunting in the hardware. Ergo ontological reductionism. Again, with the caveat the electrons also do not enjoy a privileged position. But that is another matter which I am just developing (so I can't write about it yet *grin*) Cheers, Günther -- Günther Greindl Department of Philosophy of Science University of Vienna [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://www.complexitystudies.org/ Thesis: http://www.complexitystudies.org/proposal/ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
