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spuckblase comments on Rationality Quotes - July 2009 - Less Wrong
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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.