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RobinZ comments on Rationality Quotes - July 2009 - Less Wrong
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I'm not sure your (or his) argument actually addresses popular beliefs. Two points:
Reductionism has been proposed not (merely) because it is intuitive, but because it is supported by the evidence. Starting with particle physics, you really can infer chemistry, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, heat transfer, and so on - and you can make correct predictions about when the assumptions used in the latter will break down. (For example: when the channels of fluid flow are comparable in size to the particles.) This is just as would be the case in a reductionistic universe.
Eliminativism is no more implied by reductionism than amorality. If you think that rainbows don't exist once they've been unweaved, you're making a mistake that has nothing to do with science.
I still think it relevant:
ad 1.: that might be so, but it's not all there is to reductionism, at least according to this or that attempt.
ad 2.: that might be so, but it's nonetheless a theory people rather easily catch, along with reductionism. For example: If you take reductionism for granted, and some entity does not easily fit it, then you are seduced into eliminating that entity.
Eliezer makes the further claim in those pieces that non-reductionism is based on confusion and doesn't lead to a coherent worldview, but that's not a property of reductionism.
| If you take reductionism for granted, and some entity does not easily fit it, then you are seduced into eliminating that entity.
Are there any actual individuals you have in mind when you make this generalization? To my knowledge, I have never heard of an individual ignoring observed phenomena they could not predict reductively.
Ok, I wasn't specific enough. I meant mainly that Eliezer also claimed that there is a fundamental level and that there are no funda-mental entities.
I take it you mean explain reductively? Anyway, behaviourism (and its problems with mental entities) seems the locus classicus. Or what about eliminativists like the churchlands or dennett (for qualia)? Or hartry field for numbers? There must be lots of others.
Point taken. Nevertheless, the fact that people draw absurd conclusions from a belief has no bearing on whether that belief should be questioned unless those absurd conclusions are (1) logical, rather than philosophical, inferences, and (2) contrary to evidence. Those conditions do not hold for reductionism (and Dennett, in particular, had a few things to say about "greedy reductionism").
I'm not sure what you mean by 'logical, rather than philosophical, inferences'. Aren't most (all?) philosophical inferences logical?
A logical inference is inescapable. If the universe is purely deterministic, then everything that happens tomorrow can be predicted from a complete description of the laws of nature and state of the universe at this exact instant - this is a logical inference. But if the universe is purely deterministic, then the people in the universe might be fully responsible for their acts or they might not - philosophers have drawn both inferences, because the deduction depends on additional premises not stated in the syllogism.
Likewise, the inference from reductionism to the conclusion that ordinary things do not exist - what Dennett called "greedy reductionism", and what you^H^H^Hspuckblase (sorry, didn't look at the names!) offered Schaffer's beliefs as an anodyne to - has been argued, but has also been denied, by philosophers. Its validity depends on other premises, such as what it means to exist.