Like the use of myth here very much. It centers the topic a bit over from where we usually argue.
A tweet of yours: “Nonreductionism might usefully be framed as the practical non-commutativity of analysis and synthesis.” I love this framing. It wheels nicely around the term “practical non-commutativity”.
I object to the duality of reduction and non-reduction, mainly in the vein of obscuring whether we’re talking about how reality happens, or how reality is analyzed, modeled, or understood. Your “analysis and synthesis” are a good pairing in that framing, but you’re implicitly limited in the framing to analysis, not reality itself. Thats why the mythos approach- the explanation- is so valuable here. Mythos is about analysis, explanation.
But for me, yanking synthesis in this way from reductionism and placing it wholly in the realm of nonreductionism isn’t just a simple matter of obvious definition, or au fond distinction. For instance, we seem ok with accepting that reductionism entails the vast synthesis of sub-particles into field activity, or even atomic or molecular activity; but somewhere along the line we want to artificially demarcate things. In the realm of how reality happens, it seems grossly unfair to exclude reductionism from applicability to catalytic process, or evolutionary protein genesis, or levels of analysis and emergence in general, merely because it is typically loosely framed (analyzed) as microscopic or foundational. Catalytic activity is included in reduction- it’s basic, foundational, part of the tiny, involved ways that little shit builds into big shit. To limit scope and level to a vague ‘small’ is symmetric to the problem of limiting nonreduction’s scope to a (mythic, vague) ‘large’. Dynamical systems theory teaches us that, while top-down and bottom-up models can be fantastic in their proper place, reality isn’t built up or down. Cause and interdependence swirl between all levels of scope. No wizard of Oz is doing any math (analysis, mereology) to nudge reality forward. Models don’t DO anything. We’ve developed an analytic tool called reductionism, and flail away with it as our vorpal blade- our mythos- but it isn’t how reality works. But neither is emergence. They are models, pointing at something. The distinction is artificial and, it turns out, arbitrary and vague, contrived for practical purposes.
Analytically, reduction’s sins as a mythos are limned pretty well, all over the place, in many fields- we’ve all suffered greatly from them, all our lives. But- and here the notion of self-similarity comes to mind- all of life has also all been saved by the rabid and broad-brush, aggressive use of reductionism at many levels of our lives. This particular fellow’s monkey hand is never going to let go of reduction to free myself to enjoy non-reduction as I’m living my life. Even in the modeling sense one has to go back-and-forth in a discrete attempt to mimic the brutal synthesis of real life- how much more pertinent, then, as we live our real life, is the need to see less and less of a fundamental distinction. They’re not even merely conjoined, or irremediably tangled, in my view. Maybe if we truly knew what “fundamental” meant without approximating, we could calve reduction cleanly from emergence. But I’d contend that both exist at all levels of scope, that as we do this divvying we do, we want to stay aware that we only engage in arguments about usefulness and applicability and models- about mythos- not actuality.
Perhaps all I can say is that "reductionism" is very different from "reduction". Reduction is a very useful tool in the toolkit, and any good emergentist should be familiar with it. The key is that mere analysis on its own, without accompanying synthesis, has lead to a worldview. It can be tempting to call this a straw man, but there are actually people who think that only microscopic particles are "real", or that one can "compute" an organism from the DNA alone. Reduction*ism* is the problem, not the occasional analysis.
Yes, I wobbled a little between reduction and reductionism there, thanks.
Reductionism as a philosophy seems to be embraced by the majority of materialists. They often aren’t coarse enough thinkers to believe your two examples, but they do believe they’re making a useful pt saying that if we could measure and model well enough, we’d see that what’s happening at let’s call it the subatomic level would both reveal and cause reality. I agree with them, in a sense- but again, to me, this is conflating analysis and reality. In reality, all subatomic activity occurs concurrently with and is a part of emergence. It’s things and relations of things all the way down and up, through all levels of scope, all the time- we don’t get to pretend one comes first.
On your worldview point: the problem I see with reductionism as a philosophy is almost wholly psychological. Humans tend to prematurely assume, within and without science, that we have reduced our problems down to adequately clear building blocks to put them back together in a model and know what’s going on. If we embraced the “practical” part of your definition respectfully, we would much more often refuse to assume we know enough detail about what we’re evaluating to model (or even measure) well. Reductionism as a philosophy is dangerous precisely because we are all naive realists psychologically, freed by anchoring, the FAE, the transparency assumption, confirmation bias, layered unconscious drives, simple ignorance, and limited creativity to stop our reduction too early, if you will- to miss or distort or project information unduly, and act wrongly. Very, very often in daily life, a healthy empiricism mostly involves a pretty pure reductionism, if it’s thought of as a systemic, careful faith in the usefulness of component analysis. The problem is that our psychology informs us too easily that we have found solid footing in foundational elements when we haven’t, so we play out the various forms of Russian roulette that comprise our unduly cruel and inefficient psychological lives.
The above skirts emergence unfairly- I don’t mean to. I guess I’m saying that reductionism as you defined it- with the implied care and wonder appended to its practice- is hella useful, arguably even on a standalone basis. Among quite bright materialists, though, it becomes a powerful justification for profound, assured levels of naive realism. The disrespect for levels of analysis that gets built into a myopic focus on our powers of induction also provides cover for a deadly, often crowdsourced disrespect for any attendant mereological or emergent considerations.
"we could measure and model well enough, we’d see that what’s happening at let’s call it the subatomic level would both reveal and cause reality"
This is precisely what I am saying is just a promissory note or worse, circular reasoning. If you have not completed the actual modeling/synthesis successfully, you cannot make these sorts of claims. That is the key point of the Laughlin and Pines paper.
Yes, the "living with emergence" paper, to help physicists with their stages of grief...but from a philosophical standpoint, the science has failed to sway most materialists, and the negative cultural fallout- the inertia it enables for our naive realism, our assured scientism- is greater than we assume. Another example that philosophy matters.
Like the use of myth here very much. It centers the topic a bit over from where we usually argue.
A tweet of yours: “Nonreductionism might usefully be framed as the practical non-commutativity of analysis and synthesis.” I love this framing. It wheels nicely around the term “practical non-commutativity”.
I object to the duality of reduction and non-reduction, mainly in the vein of obscuring whether we’re talking about how reality happens, or how reality is analyzed, modeled, or understood. Your “analysis and synthesis” are a good pairing in that framing, but you’re implicitly limited in the framing to analysis, not reality itself. Thats why the mythos approach- the explanation- is so valuable here. Mythos is about analysis, explanation.
But for me, yanking synthesis in this way from reductionism and placing it wholly in the realm of nonreductionism isn’t just a simple matter of obvious definition, or au fond distinction. For instance, we seem ok with accepting that reductionism entails the vast synthesis of sub-particles into field activity, or even atomic or molecular activity; but somewhere along the line we want to artificially demarcate things. In the realm of how reality happens, it seems grossly unfair to exclude reductionism from applicability to catalytic process, or evolutionary protein genesis, or levels of analysis and emergence in general, merely because it is typically loosely framed (analyzed) as microscopic or foundational. Catalytic activity is included in reduction- it’s basic, foundational, part of the tiny, involved ways that little shit builds into big shit. To limit scope and level to a vague ‘small’ is symmetric to the problem of limiting nonreduction’s scope to a (mythic, vague) ‘large’. Dynamical systems theory teaches us that, while top-down and bottom-up models can be fantastic in their proper place, reality isn’t built up or down. Cause and interdependence swirl between all levels of scope. No wizard of Oz is doing any math (analysis, mereology) to nudge reality forward. Models don’t DO anything. We’ve developed an analytic tool called reductionism, and flail away with it as our vorpal blade- our mythos- but it isn’t how reality works. But neither is emergence. They are models, pointing at something. The distinction is artificial and, it turns out, arbitrary and vague, contrived for practical purposes.
Analytically, reduction’s sins as a mythos are limned pretty well, all over the place, in many fields- we’ve all suffered greatly from them, all our lives. But- and here the notion of self-similarity comes to mind- all of life has also all been saved by the rabid and broad-brush, aggressive use of reductionism at many levels of our lives. This particular fellow’s monkey hand is never going to let go of reduction to free myself to enjoy non-reduction as I’m living my life. Even in the modeling sense one has to go back-and-forth in a discrete attempt to mimic the brutal synthesis of real life- how much more pertinent, then, as we live our real life, is the need to see less and less of a fundamental distinction. They’re not even merely conjoined, or irremediably tangled, in my view. Maybe if we truly knew what “fundamental” meant without approximating, we could calve reduction cleanly from emergence. But I’d contend that both exist at all levels of scope, that as we do this divvying we do, we want to stay aware that we only engage in arguments about usefulness and applicability and models- about mythos- not actuality.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment!
Perhaps all I can say is that "reductionism" is very different from "reduction". Reduction is a very useful tool in the toolkit, and any good emergentist should be familiar with it. The key is that mere analysis on its own, without accompanying synthesis, has lead to a worldview. It can be tempting to call this a straw man, but there are actually people who think that only microscopic particles are "real", or that one can "compute" an organism from the DNA alone. Reduction*ism* is the problem, not the occasional analysis.
Yes, I wobbled a little between reduction and reductionism there, thanks.
Reductionism as a philosophy seems to be embraced by the majority of materialists. They often aren’t coarse enough thinkers to believe your two examples, but they do believe they’re making a useful pt saying that if we could measure and model well enough, we’d see that what’s happening at let’s call it the subatomic level would both reveal and cause reality. I agree with them, in a sense- but again, to me, this is conflating analysis and reality. In reality, all subatomic activity occurs concurrently with and is a part of emergence. It’s things and relations of things all the way down and up, through all levels of scope, all the time- we don’t get to pretend one comes first.
On your worldview point: the problem I see with reductionism as a philosophy is almost wholly psychological. Humans tend to prematurely assume, within and without science, that we have reduced our problems down to adequately clear building blocks to put them back together in a model and know what’s going on. If we embraced the “practical” part of your definition respectfully, we would much more often refuse to assume we know enough detail about what we’re evaluating to model (or even measure) well. Reductionism as a philosophy is dangerous precisely because we are all naive realists psychologically, freed by anchoring, the FAE, the transparency assumption, confirmation bias, layered unconscious drives, simple ignorance, and limited creativity to stop our reduction too early, if you will- to miss or distort or project information unduly, and act wrongly. Very, very often in daily life, a healthy empiricism mostly involves a pretty pure reductionism, if it’s thought of as a systemic, careful faith in the usefulness of component analysis. The problem is that our psychology informs us too easily that we have found solid footing in foundational elements when we haven’t, so we play out the various forms of Russian roulette that comprise our unduly cruel and inefficient psychological lives.
The above skirts emergence unfairly- I don’t mean to. I guess I’m saying that reductionism as you defined it- with the implied care and wonder appended to its practice- is hella useful, arguably even on a standalone basis. Among quite bright materialists, though, it becomes a powerful justification for profound, assured levels of naive realism. The disrespect for levels of analysis that gets built into a myopic focus on our powers of induction also provides cover for a deadly, often crowdsourced disrespect for any attendant mereological or emergent considerations.
"we could measure and model well enough, we’d see that what’s happening at let’s call it the subatomic level would both reveal and cause reality"
This is precisely what I am saying is just a promissory note or worse, circular reasoning. If you have not completed the actual modeling/synthesis successfully, you cannot make these sorts of claims. That is the key point of the Laughlin and Pines paper.
Yes, the "living with emergence" paper, to help physicists with their stages of grief...but from a philosophical standpoint, the science has failed to sway most materialists, and the negative cultural fallout- the inertia it enables for our naive realism, our assured scientism- is greater than we assume. Another example that philosophy matters.