Krimel said to dmb: Here is a simple bottom line kind of question. What exactly to you find objectionable about seeking after necessary causes? After all that is all I can asking of reductionism.
dmb says: Since "seeking after necessary causes" is your phrase, I'm not so sure that it characterizes my objection. My objection to reductionism has been a response to specific statements. You said you liked the idea that "brains secrete consciousness", for example. That's reductionism. The reasons for finding this objectionable have already been stated. Again, this would be a matter of explaining social and intellectual level phenomenon in term of biological mechanism. An extreme reductionist would want to explain everything in terms of the simplest constituent parts, although I hope this is a hypothetical person and that nobody goes that far. Anyway, reducing social or intellectual patterns to the biological patterns which support them has a way of leaving the social and intellectual questions unanswered and unaddressed. There's nothing wrong with studying the small stuff. But explaining the big stuff in terms of the little stuff, the complex in terms of the simple, really only makes sense within flatland materialism. The levels of the MOQ, by contrast, paints a pluralistic picture. The forms and structures of one level can't be used to explain another because they play by different rules, so to speak. People object to reductionism for all kinds of reasons but it is especially naughty in this context, in a discussion of the MOQ. This plurality of emergent structures demands an epistemological pluralism. Each kind of thing is best understood in terms of own scale and context, point and purpose. Each has to be studied in its own terms. Consciousness is a topic of investigation in philosophy, psychology, sociology, religion, and a gazillion other fields. All this stuff should all be added to our knowledge about what brains do before one makes pronouncements about what consciousness is. Reductionism simplifies things, which can be convenient and emotionally comforting, but when it comes to something as complex as human consciousness, that's just a grotesque distortion, a narrowing beyond recognition. Putnam and one of the other Pragmatists at the conference had, earlier in their careers, suggested a hierarchy of disciplines to prevent too much reductionism. Psychology could reach down to biology. That makes sense and pretty much defines psychiatry. Biology can reach down in molecular biology to explain things but going past that is usually gonna be bogus. Molecular biology can reasonably reach down into chemistry and chemistry can legitimately use microphysics, etc. This hierarchy could easily be applied to the levels of the MOQ. Thus, as Pirsig says, there is no direct connection between biology and intellect. The social level is the middle term and they both have a relationship with the social level but not with each other. Likewise, psychology has direct connection with molecular biology. This is especially obvious if we're talking about analytic or analytical psychology rather than behaviorism, which sort of pretends to be a biological science and tends to be reductionist. Think about Pirsig's correction of Descartes. What he didn't see was that there is a middle term between mind and body, between intellect and biology. His famous line is re-written to say, "French culture and language exists, therefore I think, therefore I am." Descartes didn't see how much his consciousness depended on the social level. And so, more specifically, the idea that "brains secrete consciousness" also ignores the role of culture and language in making consciousness possible. It seems to be the neurological equivalent of Descartes mistake. Also think about how reductionism would compare to the things Rosenthal was saying about the inexhaustible richness of experience and the partial nature of all our intellectual descriptions. Temperamentally, at least, these are very opposite tendencies. Selling reductionism to a bunch of Pirsig fans is like selling polka to a punk rocker. He's no use for it and he's unlikely to admire your taste. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage1_052009 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
