Comment on Open Thread: July 2009

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:14:26 GMT

Reductionism, as I understand it, is the idea that the higher levels are completely explained by (are completely determined by) the lower levels. Any fundamentally new type of particle found would just be added to what we consider "lower level".

Oh! Certainly. But this doesn't seem to exclude "mind", or some element thereof, from being irreducible-- which is what Eliezer was trying to argue, right? He's trying to support reductionism, and this seems to include an attack on "fundamentally mental" entities. Based on what you're saying, though, there could be a fundamental type of particle, called "feelions," or "qualions"--the entities responsible for what we call "mind"--which would not reduce down to quarks, and therefore would deserve to be called their own fundamental type of "stuff." It's a bit weird to me to call this a reductionist theory, and its certainly not a reductionist materialist theory.

Everything else you said seems to me right on-- emergent properties that are irreducible to their constituents in principle seems somewhat incoherent to me.

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