Comment on Looking for reductionism help

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:27:26 GMT

Let me amend that slightly. I understand that if you're given observations which indicate that X is composed of something more basic called Y, then reductionism suggests you should believe that X only exists by virtue of being made up of Y. But my questions is, what about the claim "Everything that exists only exists by virtue of being made up of something else that's more basic." Why would this overstep reductionism? How does this claim mesh up with what we theorize or know about quantum configurations?

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