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Alejandro1 comments on Mixed Reference: The Great Reductionist Project - Less Wrong
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Mainstream status:
AFAIK, the proposition that "Logical and physical reference together comprise the meaning of any meaningful statement" is original-as-a-whole (with many component pieces precedented hither and yon). Likewise I haven't elsewhere seen the suggestion that the great reductionist project is to be seen in terms of analyzing everything into physics+logic.
An important related idea I haven't gone into here is the idea that the physical and logical references should be effective or formal, which has been in the job description since, if I recall correctly, the late nineteenth century or so, when mathematics was being axiomatized formally for the first time. This pat is popular, possibly majoritarian; I think I'd call it mainstream. See e.g. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/church-turing/ although logical specifiability is more general than computability (this is also already-known).
Obviously and unfortunately, the idea that you are not supposed to end up with more and more ontologically fundamental stuff is not well-enforced in mainstream philosophy.
This seems awfully similar to Hume's fork:
As Mardonius says, 20th century logical empiricism (also called logical positivism or neopositivism) is basically the same idea with "abstract reasoning" fleshed out as "tautologies in formal systems" and "experimental reasoning" fleshed out initially as " statements about sensory experiences". So the neopositivists' original plan was to analyze everything, including physics, in terms of logic + sense data (similar to qualia, in modern terminology). But some of them, like Neurath, considered logic + physics a more suitable foundation from the beginning, and others, like Carnap, became eventually convinced of this as well, so the mature neopositivist position is quite similar to yours.
One key difference is that for you (I think, correct me if I am wrong) reductionism is an ontological enterprise, showing that the only "stuff" there is (in some vague sense) is logic and physics. For the neopositivists, such a statement would be as meaningless as the metaphysics they were trying to "commit to the flames". Reductionism was a linguistic enterprise: to develop a language in which every meaningful statement is translatable into sentences about physics (or qualia) and logic, in order to make the sciences more unified and coherent and to do away with muddled metaphysical thought.
Is there a good statement of the "mature neopositivist" / Carnap's position?
There is no article on Carnap on the SEP, and I couldn't find a clear statement on the Vienna Circle article, but there is a fairly good one in the Neurath article:
The mature Carnap position seems to be, then, not to reduce everything to logic + fundamental physics (electrons/wavefunctions/etc), as perhaps you thought I had implied, but to reduce everything to logic + observational physics (statements like "Voltimeter reading = 10 volts"). Theoretical sentences about electrons and such are to be reduced (in some sense that varied which different formulations) to sentences of observational physics. This does not mean that for Carnap electrons are not "real"; as I said before, reductionism was conceived as a linguistic proposal, not an ontological thesis.
Experience + logic != physics + logic > causality + logic
Experience + models = reality
Cucumbers are neither experiences nor models. Yet I'm pretty sure reality includes at least one cucumber.
Cucumbers are both experiences and models, actually. You experience its sight, texture and taste, you model this as a green vegetable with certain properties which predict and constrain your similar future experiences.
Numbers, by comparison, are pure models. That's why people are often confused about whether they "exist" or not.
Are experiences themselves models? If not, are you endorsing the view that qualia are fundamental?
Experiences are, of course, themselves a multi-layer combination of models and inputs, and at some point you have to stop, but qualia seem to be at too high a level, given that they appear to be reducible to physiology in most brain models.
How do you know models exist, and aren't just experiences of a certain sort?
How do you know that unexperienced, unmodeled cucumbers don't exist? How do you know there was no physical universe prior to the existence of experiencers and modelers?
I've played with the idea that there is nothing but experience (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rather convincing). However, it then becomes surprising that my experience generally behaves as though I'm living in a stable universe with such things as previously unexperienced cucumbers showing up at plausible times.
This question is meaningless in the framework I have described (Experience + models = reality). If you provide an argument why this framework is not suitable, i.e., it fails to be useful in a certain situation, feel free to give an example.
Even just take the old logical postivist doctrine about analyticity/syntheticity: all statements are either "analytic" (i.e. true by logic (near enough)), or synthetic (true due to experience). That's at least on the same track. And I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have had a problem with statements that were partially both.