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.
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.