Hi Ian,

I see the confusion now. I do not think that reductionism is something 
restricted to SOM. Reductionism is simply the reduction of all quality to 
static quality. It is the choice to break quality up a certain way. All static 
quality is the result of reductionism. Therefore I see reductionism as 
something unavoidable and important.

What do you think?

On Thursday, 7 April 2011 at 6:26 PM, Ian Glendinning wrote: 
> 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.
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