Reduction

I consider whether the discovery of the quantum of action has any bearing on reductive physicalism. More particularly, I consider the arguments of the "new hylomorphists" to the effect that quantum physics sits most comfortably in their anti-reductionist framework.

Manifold learning and effective model building are generally viewed as fundamentally different types of procedure. After all, in one we build a simplified model of the data, in the other, we construct a simplified model of the another model. Nonetheless, I argue that certain kinds of high-dimensional effective model building, and effective field theory construction in quantum field theory, can be viewed as special cases of manifold learning. I argue that this helps to shed light on all of these techniques. (...) First, it suggests that the effective model building procedure depends upon a certain kind of algorithmic compressibility requirement. All three approaches assume that real-world systems exhibit certain redundancies, due to regularities. The use of these regularities to build simplified models is essential for scientific progress in many different domains. (shrink)

The view that our best current physics deals with effective systems has gained philosophical traction in the last two decades. A similar view about open systems has also been picking up steam in recent years. Yet little has been said about how the concepts of effective and open systems relate to each other despite their apparent kinship—both indeed seem at first sight to presuppose that the system in question is somehow incomplete. In this paper, I distinguish between two concepts of (...) effectiveness and openness in quantum field theory, which provides a remarkably well-developed theoretical framework to make a first stab at the matter, and argue that on both counts, every realistic effective system in this context is also open. I conclude by highlighting how the discussion opens novel avenues for thinking of systems as open across scales. (shrink)

Even though the talk of causal bases is commonplace in traditional and contemporary discussions about dispositions, the concept of causal bases has never been systematically investigated. This paper aims to fill this gap by developing the causal-grounding account. This account takes two roles as definitory for causal bases. First, causal bases are possible causes of disposition manifestations. Second, causal bases are metaphysical grounds of disposition instantiations. In this paper, we show that the causal-grounding account (CGA) achieves crucial distinctions (for example (...) between causal bases and manifestation conditions), captures relevant traditional features of causal bases, and can be invoked to support the causal efficacy of disposition instantiations. At the same time, CGA does not require that causal bases have to be categorical or intrinsic. This, in turn, allows us to remain neutral concerning fundamental properties, the existence of dispositional or extrinsic causal bases, multi-track dispositions, and the reducibility of dispositions. This neutrality grants the suitability of our account for different philosophical projects and discussions. (shrink)

From Aristotle to Darwin and Schrödinger to Marie Curie, understanding life has been a scientific and philosophical goal since humans were first able to conceptualise their subjectivity. Sam McKee argues that there is no point in searching for life in other worlds when we do not know what it is on our own planet. Many a debate today centres around a dispute over the definition of life, whether that be abortion politics, assisted suicide or evolutionary biology. McKee argues that we (...) must focus on the definitional question of life before we look for it elsewhere, and to do so we must ask new questions. (shrink)

This essay outlines a hierarchical framework of Reality that allows for degrees of Reality. I use Reality (with a capital “R”) to designate reality in a primitive, metaphysical sense. Reality, grounding, and essence are the key elements of the framework presented here. I assume that Reality must have a fundamental level and all fundamental phenomena must be Real. Moreover, I postulate that everything non-fundamental is ultimately grounded in the fundamental Real. But what about the Reality of the non-fundamental? I argue (...) that it is possible for non-fundamental phenomena to be Real, Unreal, or Semi-Real. The framework developed here accommodates these possibilities and illuminates them using the notion of essence. I argue that the essential nature of a phenomenon determines its degree of Reality. The framework does not assume that Reality must have degrees but only that it may have degrees. Its theoretical attractiveness consists in its ability to accommodate many diverse intuitions about grounding, help us better understand and classify theories about grounding, and illuminate Reality and its possible degrees. (shrink)

It is not unusual among particle physicists to find the belief that elementary particles and forces determine everything in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, physiology all the way up to human behaviour. It is not just that physics underlies everything in the universe; it is the belief that everything in the universe reduces to the play of elementary particles under forces. Yet, there are other physicists who argue that this is an oversimplification of the relationship between physics and other domains. This (...) book explores these debates and proposes a physics-motivated conception of emergence that leaves behind many of the problematic intuitions shaping the philosophical conceptions. It would be suitable for physicists, scientists, undergraduate and postgraduate science students interested in reduction and emergence debates. (shrink)

Functional reductionism characterises inter-theoretic reduction as the recovery of the upper-level behaviour described by the reduced theory in terms of the lower-level reducing theory. For instance, finding a statistical mechanical realiser that plays the functional role of thermodynamic entropy allows for establishing a reductive link between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. This view constitutes a unique approach to reduction that enjoys a number of positive features, but has received limited attention in the philosophy of science. -/- This paper aims to clarify (...) the meaning of functional reductionism in science, with a focus on physics, to define both its place with respect to other approaches to reduction and its connection to ontology. To do so, we develop and explore two alternative frameworks for functional reduction, called Syntactic Functional Reductionism and Semantic Functional Reductionism. They represent two different possible stances on the view that expand and improve the basic functional reductionist approach along different lines, and make clear how the approach works in practice. The former elaborates on David Lewis’ account, is connected with the syntactic view of theories, is committed to a logical characterisation of functional roles, and is embedded within Nagelian reductionism. The latter adopts a semantic view of theories, spells out functional roles mainly in terms of mathematical roles within the models of theories, and is expressed in terms of the related structuralist approach to reduction. The development of these frameworks has the final goal of advancing functional reductionism, to make it a fully-fledged alternative account for reduction in science. (shrink)

a cuestión de si la realidad es homogénea o heterogénea es uno de los debates más antiguos de la filosofía occidental y se repite en prácticamente todas las tradiciones filosóficas del mundo. Hay tres motivaciones principales para adoptar una visión heterogénea de la realidad: para dar cuenta de errores categoriales, para resolver paradojas, y para respetar la aparente heterogeneidad de nuestra experiencia, pensamiento y lenguaje. A continuación, revisaremos cada una de ellas, para después ver los principales retos que enfrenta quién (...) quiera defender una visión plural del ser. (shrink)

The scientific successes of the last 400 years strongly suggest a view on which things are organized into layers, with phenomena in higher layers dependent on and determined by what goes on below. Philosophers have recently explored the idea that we can make sense of this idea by appeal to a relation called grounding. This book develops the rudiments of a theory of grounding, and applies that theory to questions of independent interest. The theorizing consists in saying in more detail (...) what grounding is and how it relates to explanations of the relevant sort, discussing objections to the deployment of a notion of grounding, and drawing points of contrast between a grounding-centered approach to relative fundamentality and other approaches in the literature. The book then turns to a demonstration of how this theorizing bears fruit in the investigation of other interesting questions. The applications are to central questions concerning (i) how to distinguish between truths that say how objective reality is in itself, quite independently of us, and truths that do not; (ii) the nature of truth; and (iii) the relation between fundamental physical facts and the rich panoply of other facts that depend on and are determined by them, including facts concerning our own doings. The aim is to advance our understanding of one of the deepest and thorniest questions which the stunning scientific achievements of the last 400 years pose: how higher-level phenomena, including ourselves, fit into an ultimately physical world. (shrink)

Functionalism is the view that being x is to play the role of x. This paper defends a functionalist account of three-dimensional entities in the context of Wave Function Realism (WFR), that can explain in detail how we can recover three-dimensional entities out of the wavefunction. In particular, the essay advocates for a novel version of WFR in terms of a functional reductionist approach in the style of David Lewis. This account entails reduction of the upper entities to the bottom (...) ones, when the latter behave appropriately. As applied to WFR, it shows how the wavefunction can turn out to be identical to three-dimensional objects, provided certain conditions. The first major goal of the paper is thus to put forward an improved and more rigorous version of WFR, which dissolves several extant issues about the theory, and can serve as a starting point for future literature on the topic. Moreover, the second major goal of the article is to take WFR as a case study to demonstrate the pros of functional reductionism, especially in the form defended here, thereby helping to bring this view back in the philosophy of science debate. The positive upshots of this paper suggest a possible application of functional reductionism also to other contexts. (shrink)

I argue that there are two distinct approaches to understanding reduction: the ontology-first approach and the theory-first approach. They concern the relation between ontological reduction and inter-theoretic reduction. Further, I argue for the significance of this distinction by demonstrating that either one or the other approach has been taken as an implicit assumption in, and has in fact shaped, our understanding of what statistical mechanics is. More specifically, I argue that the Boltzmannian framework of statistical mechanics assumes and relies on (...) the ontology-first approach, whereas the Gibbsian framework should assume the theory-first approach. -/- . (shrink)

Negli ultimi anni, il richiamo al concetto di emergenza si è fatto sempre più diffuso in molte aree della filosofia e della scienza. Il termine viene usato per riferirsi alla circostanza in cui un sistema (fisico, chimico, biologico, ma anche sociale) manifesta delle proprietà e dei comportamenti che sembrano nuovi rispetto a quelli delle sue parti più semplici. Questo libro si propone di chiarire questo fenomeno, tenendo conto, da un lato, che le discipline coinvolte nel dibattito sono molte, quindi un (...) approccio univoco all'emergenza potrebbe non bastare e, dall'altro, che per comprendere cosa sia l'emergenza è necessario delinearne le relazioni con altre questioni filosofiche di primaria importanza come quelle che coinvolgono la fondamentalità, la complessità e la causalità. (shrink)

A popular principle about grounding, “Internality”, says that if A grounds B, then necessarily, if A and B obtain, then A grounds B. I argue that Internality is false. Its falsity reveals a distinctive, new kind of explanation, which I call “ennobling”. Its falsity also entails that every previously proposed theory of what grounds grounding facts is false. I construct a new theory of what grounds grounding: the ennobling theory.

Intuitivamente, la realidad está formada por entidades y hechos existentes y concretos. Sin embargo, nuestro lenguaje y pensamiento versa también sobre hechos meramente posibles, sobre cosas inexistentes y entidades abstractas. ¿Cómo es esto posible? ¿Significa ello que cuando hablamos y pensamos de estas otras cosas no hablamos de nada real? ¿o mas bien la realidad está mas poblada de lo que pensábamos y hay diferentes maneras de formar parte de la realidad además de la de existir de manera positiva y (...) concreta? En este libro trataremos de arrojar luz a estas y otras preguntas similares, poniendo atención a las estrategias argumentativas generales que suelen esgrimirse en esta rama de la filosofía. (shrink)

Recent discussions of emergence in physics have focussed on the use of limiting relations, and often particularly on singular or asymptotic limits. We discuss a putative example of emergence that does not fit into this narrative: the case of phonons. These quasi-particles have some claim to be emergent, not least because the way in which they relate to the underlying crystal is almost precisely analogous to the way in which quantum particles relate to the underlying quantum field theory. But there (...) is no need to take a limit when moving from a crystal lattice based description to the phonon description. Not only does this demonstrate that we can have emergence without limits, but also provides a way of understanding cases that do involve limits. (shrink)

La conversion de la France à une politique de « réduction des risques » , est généralement interprétée comme l’indice d’un changement de paradigme en matière de toxicomanie. Il est néanmoins possible de la voir comme une forme de réagencement politique du monde des consommations de drogues, visant à définir de nouveaux seuils, les plus bas possibles, pour l’entrée dans des dispositifs de soin et de service. L’examen des visions du monde sur lesquelles reposent ces équipements politiques, en France comme (...) dans le reste de l’Union européenne, montre d’ailleurs que la vision du monde autonomiste y compose avec d’autres, compensatoires et additives, plus anciennement implantées. C’est sans doute pourquoi on retrouve, à divers niveaux, un véritable décalage entre les mesures volontaristes liées à ces politiques publiques et les contextes dans lesquels elles sont mises en œuvre : qu’il s’agisse des promoteurs, professionnels ou amateurs, ou qu’il s’agisse des destinataires, tout le monde semble s’accommoder d’un fonctionnement minimal de ces dispositifs, vérifiant ainsi une fois de plus la force des liens faibles.The French turn to the so-called « risk reduction policy » , is generally interpreted as a shift of the paradigm of drug addiction policies. One can, nevertheless, see it as a kind of new political layout of the drug addiction field, intended to define new thresholds for one’s entering in the treatment and care devices. When we examine the worldviews which sustain these political equipments , we can see that the autonomist worldview has to come to terms with others, namely : the compensatory and additive ones. That is probably why we can see, at various levels, a real discrepancy between the strong willings supporting the actions promoted by the risk reduction policies, and the contexts in which they take place : would it be the main actors , or the beneficiaries, everyone seems to be satisfied with a minimal functioning of these devices, verifying once again the strength of the weak ties. (shrink)

The groups of problems that fall under the titles ‘reduction’ and ‘emergence’ appear at the boundaries of seemingly independent and well-established scientific disciplines, such as chemistry and biology, biology and psychology, biology and political theory, and so on. They arise in this way.

Scientists and philosophers frequently speak about levels of description, levels of explanation, and ontological levels. This paper presents a framework for studying levels. I give a general definition of a system of levels and discuss several applications, some of which refer to descriptive or explanatory levels while others refer to ontological levels. I illustrate the usefulness of this framework by bringing it to bear on some familiar philosophical questions. Is there a hierarchy of levels, with a fundamental level at the (...) bottom? And what does the answer to this question imply for physicalism, the thesis that everything supervenes on the physical? Are there emergent higher-level properties? Are higher-level descriptions reducible to lower-level ones? Can the relationship between normative and non-normative domains be viewed as one involving levels? And might a levelled framework shed light on the relationship between third-personal and first-personal phenomena? (shrink)

. In this paper, I examine three models of reduction. The first, and the most restrictive, is the model developed by Ernest Nagel as part of the logical empiricist program. The second, articulated by Jerry Fodor, is significantly broader, but it seems unable to make sense of a salient feature of scientific practice. The third, and the most lenient, model is developed within Newton da Costa and Steven French’s partial structures approach. I argue that the third model preserves the benefits (...) of Fodor’s proposal, and it is still able to accommodate relevant aspects of scientific practice. In particular, it offers a conception of reduction without reductionism, and an account of the relation between reduced and reducing theories via unsharp mappings and partial structures—even in the presence of incomplete information. (shrink)

Inspite of the great success in many disciplines the program of reductionism has failed its genuine purpose. Systemtheory however has yielded a new concept of reductionism which we call reductionism by correspondence and which may imply a new understanding of the mind-body problem. The crucial operations of reductionism by correspondence are called idealization, interpretation and classification. They are used to optimize the description of a system. Nevertheless they lead to certain deficiencies which cannot be avoided in principle. We are therefore (...) driven to the assumption that natural systems can only be described as probabilistic systems. From this point of view nothing is said about the direction of the reduction. (shrink)

Atomistic metaphysics motivated an explanatory strategy which science has pursued with great success since the scientific revolution. By decomposing matter into its atomic and subatomic parts physics gave us powerful explanations and accurate predictions as well as providing a unifying framework for the rest of science. The success of the decompositional strategy has encouraged a widespread conviction that the physical world forms a compositional hierarchy that physics and other sciences are progressively articulating. But this conviction does not stand up to (...) a closer examination of how physics has treated composition, as a variety of case studies will show. (shrink)

Rom Harré thinks that the Emergence–Reduction debate, conceived as a vertical problem, is partly ill posed. Even if he doesn’t wholly reject the traditional definition of an emergent property as a property of a collection but not of its components, his point is that this definition doesn’t exhaust all the dimensions of emergence. According to Harré there is another kind (or dimension) of emergence, which we may call—somewhat paradoxically—“horizontal emergence”: two properties of a substance are horizontally emergent relative to each (...) other if they cannot be displayed in the same conditions. Contrary to vertical emergence, horizontal emergence is a symmetrical relation. Harré endorses horizontal emergentism. I argue that this position faces a principled difficulty: it makes it impossible to bind different horizontally emergent discourses in an interesting way. Physics and biology for example become “island” discourses, each speaking of a distinct kind of entities. The only way to ensure that two different discourses can relate to the same entity is to reintroduce verticality into the picture. (shrink)

In 1973, Nickles identified two senses in which the term `reduction' is used to describe the relationship between physical theories: namely, the sense based on Nagel's seminal account of reduction in the sciences, and the sense that seeks to extract one physical theory as a mathematical limit of another. These two approaches have since been the focus of most literature on the subject, as evidenced by recent work of Batterman and Butterfield, among others. In this paper, I discuss a third (...) sense in which one physical theory may be said to reduce to another. This approach, which I call `dynamical systems reduction,' concerns the reduction of individual models of physical theories rather than the wholesale reduction of entire theories, and specifically reduction between models that can be formulated as dynamical systems. DS reduction is based on the requirement that there exist a function from the state space of the low-level model to that of the high-level model that satisfies certain general constraints and thereby serves to identify quantities in the low-level model that mimic the behavior of those in the high-level model - but typically only when restricted to a certain domain of parameters and states within the low-level model. I discuss the relationship of this account of reduction to the Nagelian and limit-based accounts, arguing that it is distinct from both but exhibits strong parallels with a particular version of Nagelian reduction, and that the domain restrictions employed by the DS approach may, but need not, be specified in a manner characteristic of the limit-based approach. Finally, I consider some limitations of the account of reduction that I propose and suggest ways in which it might be generalised. I offer a simple, idealised example to illustrate application of this approach; a series of more realistic case studies of DS reduction is presented in another paper. (shrink)

Convincing disputes about explanatory reductionism in the philosophy of biology require a clear and precise understanding of what a reductive explanation in biology is. The central aim of this book is to provide such an account by revealing the features that determine the reductive character of a biological explanation. Chapters I-IV provide the ground, on which I can then, in Chapter V, develop my own account of explanatory reduction in biology: Chapter I reveals the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie my analysis (...) of reduction, Chapter II introduces the previous debate about reduction in the philosophy of biology by pointing out the most crucial lessons one should learn from this debate, Chapter III critically discusses the two perspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in the philosophy of biology so far, and Chapter IV clarifies in what ways the issue of reduction is entangled with the issue of explanation. In Chapter V I present my own account of explanatory reduction. My main claim is that reductive explanations in the biological sciences possess three main characteristics: they explain the behavior of a biological system S, first, exclusively in terms of factors that are located on a lower level of organization than S, second, by focusing on factors that are internal to S , and third, by describing the genuine parts of S only as “parts in isolation”. This account is ontic because it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist in the world. (shrink)

The causal theory of reference (CTR) provides a well-articulated and widely-accepted account of the reference relation. On CTR the reference of a term is fixed by whatever property causally regulates the competent use of that term. CTR poses a metaethical challenge to realists by demanding an account of the properties that regulate the competent use of normative predicates. CTR might pose a challenge to ethical theorists as well. Long argues that CTR entails the falsity of any normative ethical theory. First-order (...) theory attempts to specify what purely descriptive property is a fundamental right-making property (FRM). Long contends that the notion that the FRM causally regulates competent use of the predicate ‘right’ leads to a reductio. The failure of this argument is nevertheless instructive concerning a point at which ethics and metaethics overlap. (shrink)

A comprehensive volume examining the fundamental questions raised by reductionists' theory about levels of explanation necessary to understand biological systems. The book evaluates the enormously powerful techniques of molecular biology, and analyzes precisely how molecular information has improved our understanding of fundamental biological processes.

The present volume aims at giving a discussion ot the problems ot reductionism in contemporary life sciences. It contains six papers which deals with reduction/reductionism in different fields ot biological research. Also, the holistic perspective, 1. e. the systems view, is discussed in some ot the papers. The message ot this discussion Is that - whereas reductionism is indeed an important strategy - the systems approach is needed. It is argued by some ot the authors that organisms are complex systems (...) and not just heaps of molecules, 50 that the analytical method does not suffice. Recent developments in systems theory offer the possibility to install a more comprehensive view ot living systems what can be seen particularly in the field ot evolutionary biology. It is true that any organismic activity is molecular, this is to say that it is based on molecular mechanisms. But it is also true that the whole organism displays certain patterns ot behavior which are not just molecular. Any organism can be described as a system ot different levels ot organization different levels ot order and complexity - and it is important, theretore, to study all ot the organizational levels and to see their peculiarities. It should be obvious, however, that there is not one problem ot reduction/reductionism, but that there are many problems linked together and that these problems appear at different levels ot biological research and bio philosophical reflections. (shrink)