Probably best if I use an example David (H). I like Steven Pinker's "The genes ate my homework" example.
Reductionism is OK as part of the explanatory process, the process of understanding and arriving at explanations. The history of dog evolution and dog genes definitely have something to do with why dogs chew things they get hold of, and the chemistry of their DNA is behind that somewhere. The "full" SOMist / reductionist explanation invloves a great stack of things right back to quarks and strings and fundamental physical laws in this world. But it's unlikely our Pirsigian English teacher would accept the "genes" excuse as an "explanation" for why you're not handing in your assignment. Am I right ? He'd probably expect your explanation to involve some socio-intellectual patterns. PS Nice move with the Hamish Essentialism thread. I wish I had time to watch ;-) Ian What's so funny 'bout ... On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 10:54 PM, David Harding <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Ian, > >> Reductionism is OK as part of the >> explanatory process, but not as the answer, the explanation itself - >> eg to a question of definition for example. > > Can you please rephrase this concluding sentence? I am having trouble > understanding exactly what you mean. >>> > 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/md/archives.html > 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/md/archives.html
