Yvain comments on The Power of Positivist Thinking - Less Wrong

68 Post author: Yvain 21 March 2009 08:55PM

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Comment author: Yvain 22 March 2009 01:21:46PM *  6 points [-]

I'm hesitant to use "reductionism" because I already interpret that to be a belief about the material world (747s made of quarks and so on), not about propositions. I know people who accept material reductionism, but not propositional reductionism.

The real positivists were willing to accept that 2+2=4 was irreducible, since they considered it a tautology/definition and so exempt from testing. I am split: I think in one sense it's tautological, but that we pay attention to that particular tautology for reasons involving a testable generalization over all cases where two objects have been added to two objects and the result has been four objects.