Reductionism does not have quite the same hold in philosophy of science that it once did, having been subjected to powerful attack not only from Cartwright, but from Paul Feyerabend, John Dupré, and many others. (I discuss the anti-reductionist literature in detail in Aristotle’s Revenge.) Still, the idea that whatever is real is somehow ultimately nothing more than what can in principle be described in the language of a completed physics exerts a powerful hold on many. Cartwright cites James Ladyman and Don Ross as adherents of this view, and Alex Rosenberg is another prominent advocate. As Cartwright notes, in contemporary writing about science, the lure of reductionism is especially evident in discussions of the purported implications of neuroscience for topics like free will.
Cartwright
sets the stage for her discussion by quoting a famous passage from physicist
Sir Arthur Eddington’s book The
Nature of the Physical World:
I have settled down to the task of
writing these lectures and have drawn up my chairs to my two tables. Two tables!
Yes; there are duplicates of every object about me – two tables, two
chairs, two pens…
One of them has been familiar to me
from earliest years. It is a commonplace
object of that environment which I call the world. How shall I describe it? It has extension; it is comparatively
permanent; it is coloured; above all it is substantial… [I]f you are a plain commonsense man, not too
much worried with scientific scruples, you will be confident that you
understand the nature of an ordinary table…
Table No. 2 is my scientific table…
It does not belong to the world previously mentioned – that world which
spontaneously appears around me when I open my eyes... My scientific table is
mostly emptiness. Sparsely scattered in
that emptiness are numerous electric charges rushing about with great speed;
but their combined bulk amounts to less than a billionth of the bulk of the
table itself…
There is nothing substantial about my second table. It is
nearly all empty space – space pervaded, it is true, by fields of force, but
these are assigned to the category of “influences”, not of “things”. (pp.
xi-xiii)
Now, reductionism
holds that in some sense the first table is really “nothing but” the second
table – or even that the first table does not, strictly speaking, really exist
at all, and that only the second table does (though philosophers typically
characterize the latter sort of view as eliminativist rather than
reductionist).
Reduced reductionism
The first
consideration Cartwright raises to illustrate how problematic reductionism is
concerns the way reductionists have, over the last few decades, repeatedly had
to qualify their claims. The ambitions
of reductionism have, you might say, been greatly reduced. Bold type-type
reductionism gave way first to a weaker token-token
reductionism, and then to yet weaker supervenience
theories.
Type-type
reductionist theories hold that each type
of feature described at some higher-level science can be identified with some type of feature described at a
lower-level science, and ultimately at the level of physics. Perhaps the best-known theory of this kind is
the original mind-brain identity theory,
which holds that every type of psychological state (the belief that it is
raining, the belief that it is sunny, the desire for a cheeseburger, the fear
that the stock market will crash, etc.) can be identified with some specific
type of brain process. A stock example
from the physical sciences would be the claim that temperature is identical to
mean kinetic energy.
As
Cartwright notes, one problem with this sort of view is that it is difficult to
find plausible cases of successful type-type reductions beyond such stock
examples. Another is that the stock
examples themselves are not in fact unproblematic. “Reduction” claims seem really to be eliminativist
claims after all. For example, given the
so-called reduction of temperature, it’s not that what we’ve always understood
to be temperature is really just mean kinetic energy. It’s that what we’ve always understood to be
temperature is not real after all (or exists only as a quale of our experience
of the physical world, rather than something there in the physical world
itself) and all that really exists is mean kinetic energy instead.
A problem
with supposing otherwise is that the laws that govern the features of some
higher-level description and the laws that govern the features of some allegedly
corresponding lower-level description can yield conflicting predictions. One way to think about this – though not
Cartwright’s own example – is in terms of Donald
Davidson’s view that descriptions at the psychological level are not
law-governed in the way that the materialist supposes that descriptions at the
neurological level are. Hence, even if a
brain event of a certain type is strictly predictable, the corresponding mental
event will not be. Given this sort of
mismatch, there is pressure on the type-type reductionist to treat the
higher-level description as not strictly true.
An
especially influential consideration that led philosophers to abandon type-type
reductionism is the “multiple realizability” problem – the fact that
higher-level features can be “realized in” more than one type of lower-level
feature, so that there is no smooth mapping of higher-level types on to
lower-level types of the kind an ambitious reductionist project aims for. In the case of the mind-brain identity
theory, the problem is that the same mental state (believing that it is
raining, say) could plausibly be associated with different types of brain
process in different people, or even in the same person at different
times. Or consider how an economic
property like being one dollar can be
realized in paper currency, in metal currency, or as an electronic record of
one’s bank account balance.
This led
philosophers to embrace less ambitious token-token
reductionist theories. The idea here is
that even if types of feature at a
higher level cannot be smoothly correlated with types of feature at a lower level, nevertheless every token or individual instance of a feature
at the higher level can be identified with some token or individual instance of
a lower-level feature. For example, this particular instance of believing that it’s raining is identical
with that particular instance of a
certain type of brain process.
As
Cartwright notes, however, token reductions in fact tend to yield, after all, type
reduction claims of a sort. An example
would involve disjunctive types at
the lower level of description. For
instance, a token reductionist view of mind-brain relations may entail that a
type of mental state like believing that
it is raining is identical to a “type” of neural property defined as being in brain state of type B1 OR being in
brain state of type B2 OR being in brain state of type B3 OR… And this will, in turn, open up the
possibility of a conflict between what the laws that govern the higher-level
description entail and what the laws that govern the lower-level description
entail.
If it is
objected that disjunctive “types” of the kind just described seem artificial, that
is certainly plausible. But the problem,
as Cartwright notes, is that this illustrates how identifying what counts as a
plausible type is going to require detailed metaphysical analysis, and cannot
be read off the science, as the reductionist supposes.
In any
event, token-token reductionism gave way in turn to talk of supervenience. The basic idea here is that phenomena at some
higher level of description A supervene
on phenomena at some lower level of description B just in case there could not be any difference at what happens at
level A without some corresponding
difference in what happens at level B.
But exactly
what this amounts to is not obvious, and debating the meaning of supervenience
has, Cartwright complains, been a bigger concern of philosophers than
explaining exactly why anyone should believe in it in the first place. (More on this in a moment.) As its vagueness indicates, supervenience entails
an even weaker claim than token-token reduction. Though, in recent years, there has been a lot
of heavy going about “grounding,” which, Cartwright notes, is stronger than
supervenience. The idea is that all
facts are “grounded” in the facts described at the level of physics, in the
sense that whatever happens at the higher levels is “due to” what happens at
the lower, physics level. But here too, why suppose this is the case?
Groundless grounding
Where the
claim that everything supervenes on the level described by physics is
concerned, Cartwright says, there are three basic reasons given for it, none of
them well worked out or convincing.
First, there is a leap from the fact that the lower-level features
described by physics affect what
happens at the higher levels, to the conclusion that those features by themselves
entirely fix what happens at the
higher levels. This is simply a non sequitur.
Second,
there is a leap from the supposition that successful reductions have been
carried out in a handful of cases, to
the conclusion that reductionism is in
general true. But this too is a non sequitur (and on top of that, the
premise is questionable). Third, there
is the claim that physicalistic reductionism is in fact the method applied
within science. But this, Cartwright
argues, is simply not true to the facts of actual scientific practice.
“Grounding”
accounts of reduction suppose that the level described by physics is the sole cause of what happens at the higher
levels, and also that it is in no way itself caused by what happens at the
higher levels. These claims too, argues
Cartwright, are not supported by actual scientific practice.
Here she
appeals in part to recent work in the philosophy of chemistry, in which two
general lines of anti-reductionist argument have been developed. The first and more ambitious of them argues
that chemistry as a discipline rests on classificatory and methodological
assumptions that are simply sui generis
and make the features of the world it uncovers irreducible to those uncovered
by physics. The second does not rule out
reductions a priori, but argues on a
case by case basis that purported reductions have not in fact successfully been
carried out. (I discuss this work in
philosophy of chemistry at pp. 330-40 of Aristotle’s
Revenge.)
But it is
not just that chemistry and other higher-level sciences are not in fact “all
physics” at the end of the day. As
Cartwright emphasizes, “even physics isn’t all physics.” For one thing, “physics” covers a range of
branches, theories, and practices, not all of which have been reduced to the most
fundamental theories. For another, even
the fundamental theories themselves are not fully compatible with each other,
the notorious inconsistency between quantum mechanics and the general theory of
relativity being a longstanding and still unresolved problem. She adds:
The third and to me most important
point is that in real science about real systems in the real world, for
predictions and explanations of even the purest of physics results, physics
must work in cooperation with a motley assembly of other knowledge, from other
sciences, engineering, economics, and practical life. (p. 110)
Cartwright
then goes on to describe in detail the Stanford Gravity Probe B
project as an illustration of the vast quantity of theoretical knowledge and
practical know-how that are necessary in order to apply and test abstract physical
theory, yet cannot itself be reduced to such theory. This recapitulates a longtime theme in
Cartwright’s work over the decades, viz. that the mathematical models and laws
of physics are idealized and simplified abstractions
from concrete physical reality, and do not themselves constitute or capture
concrete physical reality.
In short,
reductionism, Cartwright judges, is poorly defined and poorly argued for. Its lingering prestige is unearned.
I’ve mainly
just summarized Cartwright’s arguments here, since I sympathize with them and
they supplement those that I develop in Aristotle’s
Revenge. They give us, though, only
her case against the views she
opposes, rather than the positive account she’d put in place of them, which is
described later in the book. More on
that in a later post.
Related
reading:
Dupré
on the ideologizing of science
Scientism:
America’s State Religion
OP,
ReplyDelete"It’s that what we’ve always understood to be temperature is not real after all (or exists only as a quale of our experience of the physical world, rather than something there in the physical world itself) and all that really exists is mean kinetic energy instead."
Continuing along that line of expression, allow me to offer going even further, that the "mean" does not exist either, in that sense of the word "exist", because that which does exist has no notion of its properties relative to other such existent entities. "Mean" is, when speaking in such terms, just an abstraction, an approximation that we abstractly attribute to our perceived extramental reality.
"The idea is that all facts are “grounded” in the facts described at the level of physics, in the sense that whatever happens at the higher levels is “due to” what happens at the lower, physics level. But here too, why suppose this is the case?"
Because otherwise things happen for no reason at all, much less a sufficient reason. If our approximated high level observations are not
"due to" lower level details then what else are they due to?
Again and again we have been very successful in explaining the very large as the aggregate of the very small. A better question would be why anyone would think we are at the end of such explanatory regression analysis.
"This is simply a non sequitur."
That claim of non-sequitur is itself the non-sequitur, a mere denial of what has, in fact, been a highly successful project, reductionist scientific explanation.
"Second, there is a leap from the supposition that successful reductions have been carried out in a handful of cases, to the conclusion that reductionism is in general true. But this too is a non sequitur"
Hardly a non-sequitur, rather, highly evidenced inductive reasoning.
"The first and more ambitious of them argues that chemistry as a discipline rests on classificatory and methodological assumptions that are simply sui generis and make the features of the world it uncovers irreducible to those uncovered by physics."
Nonsense. Chemistry is explained by physics, primarily the physics of electron orbitals and various sorts of bonding, but a great deal more.
"For another, even the fundamental theories themselves are not fully compatible with each other,"
I advise you, Dr. Feser, to return to your own rather eloquent words stated at the outset in the OP,
*...the idea that whatever is real is somehow ultimately nothing more than what can in principle be described in the language of a completed physics...*
A completed physics indeed. Of course there are contradictions and gaps, clearly, physics is not yet completed, and perhaps it never will be.
"In short, reductionism, Cartwright judges, is poorly defined and poorly argued for. Its lingering prestige is unearned. "
Reductionism earns its prestige every day of your modern technologically assisted life, all brought to you by scientific reductionism, a vast and extremely successful human project to which you seem rather oblivious.
Science has to take a reductionist approach regardless of whether reductionism is true or not, because that is the realm of science.
Delete"It works" is not a valid argument either. All models are wrong, but some of them "work". Still, they are wrong. So if you want to argue in favour of reductionism, you need to do it on some other level.
StardustPsyche is appealing to the principle of sufficient reason?
DeleteMaybe there is hope for you yet!
A completed physics indeed. Of course there are contradictions and gaps, clearly, physics is not yet completed, and perhaps it never will be.
DeleteIf there are "contradictions", then that means that not only is current physics incomplete in the sense that there is more to describe, but "incomplete" in the sense that part of what it teaches is wrong, incomplete because it needs correction.
Which part? (Answer: we don't know yet.)
What if one part that is wrong is the reductionism?
"Still, they are wrong."
DeleteThen godism is wrong.
If reductionism is wrong because it has not achieved total accuracy then godism is wrong because it has not achieved total accuracy.
In fact, godism lacks accuracy altogether, having no theory of the natural world at all, merely a myriad of contradictory idle speculations.
Whereas the materialist reductionist observes a natural phenomena and can explain it with great success in extraordinary detail the godist has no so such capability at all. All the godist can do is make up fanciful invisible beings with no method of corroboration or verification.
You say reductionism is wrong because it is not perfectly accurate, but there you fail to comprehend the claim of the reductionist.
PV = nRT is the Ideal Gas Law. It is an example of the great successes of scientific reductionism and it is not wrong.
In other words, the claim is correct, verifiably correct.
You can see why the claim is correct in the very name of the expression, "Ideal".
PV = nRT is not wrong because it is not perfectly accurate, it is verifiably correct that it is "Ideal". To understand how correct that expression is you need to go beyond your superficial glance at it, and understand what the claim of "Ideal" means.
The claim is to have achieved a highly accurate description, and that claim is correct, not "wrong", rather, verifiably correct.
The evidence that we scientific reductionist materialists are on the correct methodological path is that our idealizations are becoming ever more accurate. The more we reduce, the more accurate the idealization becomes.
Godism, by comparison, is just a disjointed mashup of contradictory fanciful speculations about invisible beings nobody can observe or verify at all.
"all models are wrong..." I haven't read Cartwright's book, but I think the message is that some reductionism is necessary but it is not sufficient. The best science applies systems theory (the holistic view), it doesn't merely reduce. If you ignore interconnections, feedback loops etc, your model will be more limited than it could be otherwise. For example, Einsteins' theories model a greater range of phenomena that Newton's theories because they take into account the bigger picture.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory
You seem to be conflating metaphysics with science. No one here thinks that God makes for an effective scientific theory. Rather, He is a metaphysically
Deletenecessary being that undergirds all existence.
Also, the success of scientific endeavor absolutely does not presuppose or even lend support to metaphysical reductionism. Metaphysical reductionists are not on the "right methodological path" because they aren't on a methodological path at all! Science doesn't operate under such turgid, totalizing views of the world. It is only in the business of explaining nature, not dogmatically reducing all phenomena to physics. E.g., gas ideality isn't reductionist. It's simply a *useful extrapolation* from how all real gases behave to a simplified, mathematical model of them, not part of some program to "reduce" all gases to something more fundamental. One can theorize and explain without reducing.
@StardustyPsyche
Delete"PV = nRT is the Ideal Gas Law. It is an example of the great successes of scientific reductionism"
No, there is nothing reductionistic about PV = nRT. The ideal gas law captures the relationship between the pressure, volume, temperature, and amount of a gas. Nothing is being reduced to something else. The ideal gas law is science but not scientific reductionism. The OP is critical of the latter, not the former.
Astro,
DeleteReductionism is the explanation of the macro as due to the micro.
PV = nRT
The Pressure of a gas times the Volume equals the number of molecules or atoms in the gas times a constant R that depends on the units chosen times the Temperature.
This idealized equation explains the bulk properties of gas as due to the molecules of that gas.
The ideal gas law is a classic example of the success of scientific reductionist materialism.
There is no reference to the form of the gas, or the actualization of a potential, or any of that ancient nonsense.
The derivation of the ideal gas law also shows examples of the great success of scientific reductionist materialism, using the kinetic theory of gas.
The bulk property of pressure is explained by summing the force of impact of a billion billion billion molecules. A clear example of explaining the macro properties at the human scale as due to the submicroscopic entities that are so small we cannot see them even with the best optical microscope.
Temperature is also explained as the mean kinetic energy of the molecules.
So, Astro, you could not be more wrong. You also have no alternative explanation for pressure, temperature, or the relationship between temperature, pressure, and volume of an ideal gas.
But by all means, critics of scientific reductionist materialism, state an alternative explanation for the relationship between pressure, volume, and temperature of an ideal gas. What sort of non-reductionist explanation can you offer?
@Stardusty Psyche
DeleteOK, point taken, I guess PV=nRT is reductionistic. And, I doubt that Prof Feser nor most others on this discussion group would deny that reductionistic techniques can frequently be useful in understanding reality.
As I understand it, the viewpoint being criticized by the OP is that everything about reality can be understood through reductionism. So, pointing to an example (or even a great many examples) where reductionism works does not really address the concern of the OP.
Astro,
Delete"As I understand it, the viewpoint being criticized by the OP is that everything about reality can be understood through reductionism"
Human beings do not know everything. Well, there is truly profound and unique observation.
Chemistry has been reduced to atomic theory, electron orbital theory, particle physics, and field physics.
Biology has been reduced to cells and fluids and chemistry and DNA and molecular biology.
The device you use here reduces to electrons and protons and quantum mechanics.
But so far human beings have not reduced everything completely, therefore...what?
What is supposed to be the alternative?
A-T, by contrast, has explained nothing at all. A-T is a dead letter in all fields of human enquiry, especially science and technology.
What medical breakthroughs are due to A-T? Great scientific discoveries of A-T? Has anybody ever gotten a Nobel prize by application of A-T?
I find your insistence that chemistry "has been reduced" to various subdisciplines of physics profoundly ignorant.
DeleteReturning to the ideal gas law, you must notice that you're importing all of this grand reductionistic baggage when it comes to that model of reality. PV=nRT certainly does NOT involve any claim that gas as a physical thing can be *exhaustively* explained by summing force vectors or something of the like. Dr. Feser has addressed this many times before, that science as a discipline completely ignores and cuts out any reference to metaphysics *a priori*. It is ONLY a method for arriving at knowledge of the OBSERVABLE WORLD via observation and experiment. Hence the ideal gas law: it's strictly a useful model of the relationship between various (quantifiable) gaseous properties. It doesn't claim that there is *nothing more* to pressure or temperature than force vectors or kinetic energy.
When we get into things beyond the quantifiable properties, A-T needs to step in. You act like A-T is some sort of obsolete scientific theory, when really it's a complete metaphysics that seeks to address fundamental questions of reality, knowledge, being, truth, etc. Can gas ideality explain the *concept* of a gas? What it means for it to be? Why it behaves the way it does? What about the qualitative experience of pressure humans can have? Maybe you say yes, but you need to step beyond science into a competing philosophical framework devoid of empirical evidence to argue that. All of these questions beyond the scope of summing force vectors. All addressed by A-T philosophy.
You'll never be able to put reason in SP. He's a notorious nefarious troll, and I wonder why Feser didn't ban the blockhead.
DeleteThis recapitulates a longtime theme in Cartwright’s work over the decades, viz. that the mathematical models and laws of physics are idealized and simplified abstractions from concrete physical reality, and do not themselves constitute or capture concrete physical reality.
ReplyDeleteHmm... I don't think so.
Nikola Tesla believed that physics and mathematics are not interdependent. And I think that he is right: the archetype of physics is not overlapping with the archetype of mathematics.
However, there is something in this universe that is very, very mathematical. So while physics as an archetype does not overlap with mathematics, in this universe, physics must be very mathematical, and so the usage of mathematics in physics cannot be written off as a necessary contrivance.
Nikola Tesla believed that physics and mathematics are not interdependent. And I think that he is right: the archetype of physics is not overlapping with the archetype of mathematics.
DeleteI could not figure out what you mean here. It would help if you actually stated what the "archetypes" are that you refer to. I was not aware that there is a settled archetype of physics or math.
and so the usage of mathematics in physics cannot be written off as a necessary contrivance.
It seems to me that it is indeed possible to say that mathematics is built into the physical reality, AND to say that (at least some of) the laws we use to physically describe the universe are still idealized and simplified abstractions from the reality. Certainly the temperature example (as an average of the kinetic energy) satisfies the description: none of the particles in motion need have the mean value as their own energy value. The reality is X1 particle has energy E1, X2 particle has energy E2,..., and any "mean" just is an abstraction.
@Anonymous
DeleteI could not figure out what you mean here. It would help if you actually stated what the "archetypes" are that you refer to. I was not aware that there is a settled archetype of physics or math.
Let's put it this way: there's nothing in the definition of physics that requires it to be mathematical. It is possible that there exists a universe where physics is logocentric, operating on words, stories and logic instead of arithmocentric like in this universe. However, the fact that physics is arithmocentric is itself a reflection on the design principles of this universe.
Certainly the temperature example (as an average of the kinetic energy) satisfies the description: none of the particles in motion need have the mean value as their own energy value. The reality is X1 particle has energy E1, X2 particle has energy E2,..., and any "mean" just is an abstraction.
Unfortunately, this flew over my head.
Certainly the temperature example (as an average of the kinetic energy) satisfies the description: none of the particles in motion need have the mean value as their own energy value. The reality is X1 particle has energy E1, X2 particle has energy E2,..., and any "mean" just is an abstraction.
DeleteI reflected deeper upon your words, and I realized that there's something left unexplained.
If objective reality is that each ensemble of a (very large but) finite number n of particles E_1, E_2, etc... E_n have physical meaning, but the mean is just an abstraction... then how did humans gain the ability to feel the abstract mathematical mean? If I feel a piece of ice, as compared to warm water, I am feeling a much lower abstract mathematical mean, but it should not be logically possible to feel something abstract and mathematical. Yet everyone knows that we can feel temperature. How can we explain this?
HK,
Delete"how did humans gain the ability to feel the abstract mathematical mean?"
We didn't. We don't sense abstractions. Abstractions are descriptions of what we sense.
"Yet everyone knows that we can feel temperature. How can we explain this?"
Search for "thermosensation"
Here is one available graphic on the subject.
Thermosensation
Thermosensitive nerves are sensitive to temperature such that they send one sort of electrochemical signal to the brain at one temperature, and at another temperature the cell is affected such that a different sort of signal is sent to the brain.
Temperature can change physical processes such as chemical reaction rate, viscosity, and electroconductivity.
We didn't evolve cells that sense abstractions, rather, we evolved cells that vary in their nerve outputs due to physical processes in the cell that vary in accordance to changing temperature.
Biology reduces to chemistry and physics, in the sense stated very well indeed in the OP, "...whatever is real is somehow ultimately nothing more than what can in principle be described in the language of a completed physics...".
@StardustyPsyche
Delete...whatever is real is somehow ultimately nothing more than what can in principle be described in the language of a completed physics...
This is the logical fallacy of begging the question, because it presupposes that the completed physics is going to look a certain way. How do you know that the completed physics at the end of history won't look like something closer to Aristotle than to Laplace? Are you an astrologer or a fortune teller, sitting in your caravan with a crystal ball and gold hoop earrings seeing into the future, and saw in your Tukish coffe reading a premonition that "yup, it will look something closer to Laplace"?
HK,
Delete"This is the logical fallacy of begging the question, because it presupposes that the completed physics is going to look a certain way. "
No, it is not a presupposition. It is evidence. The evidence of a very great deal of careful and detailed research.
You clearly have not been paying attention to the progress of physics. Just to catch you up a bit, it keeps getting smaller.
"How do you know that the completed physics at the end of history won't look like something closer to Aristotle than to Laplace? "
Because Aristotle was disproved centuries ago.
A-T is a dead letter in physics.
The book of Genesis is a dead letter in geology.
Only people with strange superstitions actually believe that old nonsense. In the mean time scientific materialist reductionism has moved on to identify the very large as due to the very small.
Do you have any science education at all? Have you ever heard about minerals, molecules, atoms, quarks, electrons, photons, fields, ?
How about bacteria, viruses, cells, DNA, molecular biology?
There is no A-T to be found in any of our vast scientific reductionist materialist evidence.
Scientific reductionist materialism is not a presupposition, it is a vastly evidenced conclusion you have to be blind not to see.
No, it is not a presupposition. It is evidence. The evidence of a very great deal of careful and detailed research.
DeleteIt is logically impossible for there to be evidence about what the future state of physics will look like, unless you are literally an astrologer in a caravan peering into a crystal ball and reading Turkish coffee grounds. The future by definition does not exist. It's what will exist (future tense), meaning it does not exist (present tense), because the tense "will exist" is mutually exclusive with the tense "exists".
“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. It was man’s ability to invent which has made human society what it is.” - Dennis Gabor, winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for inventing holography.
Therefore, the only way you can appeal to future physics is if you have a preconception that future physics is going to look a certain way. And that would be a presupposition.
The book of Genesis is a dead letter in geology.
"Where wast thou when I laid up the foundations of the earth? tell me if thou hast understanding." (Job 38:4)
Not only does the future not exist, but the past doesn't exist either. Except for memories, consequences, and sometimes artifacts (great pyramids, the Book of Genesis), the past is just as non-existent as the future.
HK,
Delete"It is logically impossible for there to be evidence about what the future state of physics will look like,"
Suppose you begin pouring a teapot into a cup.
When the cup is half full can you predict the future filling of the cup?
Is it logical for you to consider that if pouring keeps going the way it is going right now the level in the cup will continue to rise?
Or are you paralyzed in the present moment with no clue as to what the future level in the cup will be?
"peering into a crystal ball"
Do you need a crystal ball to plan what will happen if you, say, drive your car off a cliff?
Is the future entirely unpredictable?
The progress for chemistry and biology has been reductionist and that trend continues.
The more we reduce the more we explain.
A-T is just vague ancient nonsense that explains nothing and does nothing in modern chemistry and biology.
Do you suppose you could get a job as a chemist by explaining to the interviewer that chemical reactions are due to earth, water, air, and fire? Perhaps you would explain to your future boss that chemical change is the actualization of a potential? Really?
SP proves the future to be totally mysterious.
DeleteThe amount of times I've seen his silly answers and his vacuous claims is baffling. Now, watch as he pulls out "the four elements" as a solid base for criticizing the A-T approach.
I wonder what he'll say when he'll learn that quarks don't work the way he expects. Namely, the creation of particle/antiparticle from the quantum foam, the sheer amount of them that is inside one "elementary" particle (a few thousands), how come only four of them are used for stability (valence quark)...
...I guess he'll say that "it's not what you say, it's Democritus who said it right". Or some random nonsense.
And by that, he'll surprise me once more by how stupider he can be. That's how future will be mysterious: for whatever thing that exist, SP will always provide something more idiotic than what you think is possible.
Is it logical for you to consider that if pouring keeps going the way it is going right now the level in the cup will continue to rise?
DeleteAccording to David Hume, not at all. Look up the riddle of induction. That is actually why statistics was invented: because no amount of past experiences can guarantee that the future will look the same, therefore we can only use statistics to analyze past events and conclude that it is statistically likely for the same pattern to continue into the future with a specified confidence level.
Anon,
Delete"Now, watch as he pulls out "the four elements" as a solid base for criticizing the A-T approach."
The "A" in A-T stands for Aristotle.
Aristotle's "chemistry" was earth, water, air, fire.
Therefore the A-T approach to chemistry is earth, water, air, fire.
Ok, maybe even an Aristotelian realizes Aristotle was wrong about that. Fine.
He was also wrong about motion, which does not necessitate a continuous action upon that which is moving.
He was wrong about a unidirectional causal series, as all real causation is mutual and multilateral.
It is not so much that the statement "change is the actualization of a potential" is wrong, it is merely inane and pointless. Yes, stuff only does what stuff can do. We never see stuff doing what stuff can't do. That tautological observation is useless, which is why it does not appear on science or engineering exams.
You don't get credit for stating that "it changed because it could change that way". No kidding. How profound.
""it's not what you say, it's Democritus who said it right""
The Atomists preceded Aristotle and did much better understanding the structure of the underlying reality. They observed and reasoned that material must be composed of atoms, and that those atoms must have mechanisms for connecting to each other.
If you think carefully about how an odor is transmitted or blocked, the relationship between taste and smell, and what happens to salt or sugar when placed in water then the water dries and the salt or sugar reappear but could have been tasted in the water although invisible.
Very obviously chemistry reduces to physics. Even Aristotle began our journey of reductionist discovery by reducing matter to 4 elements. Unfortunately, he made negative progress in chemistry relative to the atomists who preceded him.
But, you antireductionists complain, reductionism only takes us down to 10^-15, it doesn't explain everything.
Well, anti-reductionism does not explain anything, or do you suppose chemistry is not due to atomic scale forces and particles after all?
What do you suppose is really at the bottom, Plank scale angels?
HK,
Delete"we can only use statistics to analyze past events and conclude that it is statistically likely for the same pattern to continue into the future with a specified confidence level."
That is "considering", just as I stated, yet you denied.
There is no "riddle" to induction, it is how you and I function moment to moment.
That is "considering", just as I stated, yet you denied.
DeleteThere is no "riddle" to induction, it is how you and I function moment to moment.
Consider the 2023 Thanksgiving turkey. He's purchased on November 1st. He wakes up in his coop on November 2nd and thinks "Today's a great day!" Then again on November 3rd he gets up and says "Today's a great day!" This keeps repeating and repeating until Thursday November 23rd. (I know it takes usually a full day beforehand to prepare and cook a turkey, but just bare with me.)
What does inductive logic demand the Thanksgiving turkey to conclude will happen to him on Thursday November 23rd?
What will actually happen to the turkey on Thursday November 23rd?
HK,
Delete"What will actually happen to the turkey on Thursday November 23rd?"
Everybody has to go one day. You and I realize that, I very much doubt any turkey does.
Do you consider yourself to be of equivalent cognitive capacity with a turkey? I rather doubt it.
What is the riddle supposed to be here? Animals learn. If something works one time an animal is likely to try it again. On average that tends to be helpful. From time to time circumstances change and if the animal simply does the same thing again it goes wrong. Again, what is the riddle supposed to be?
Do you consider yourself to be of equivalent cognitive capacity with a turkey? I rather doubt it.
DeleteRelative to the Universe, we all have the cognitive capacity of a turkey.
The point being, inductive logic gives a different answer than objective logic does. That is the riddle of induction.
Reductionism is very much a "science of the gaps" belief, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteWCB
DeleteNo. Positivism was a program of French thinker August Comte.
......
The task of scientists was twofold—first, to demonstrate how all phenomena, including human behavior, are subject to invariable natural laws (9). Second, they would reduce these natural laws to the smallest possible number, and ultimately unify them under the laws of physics.
......
Here is one great root of reductionism.
Made explicit. Building on the empiricism of Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, Hume and other empiricists.
WCB
Is Feser saying that tables are NOT made of smaller les complex parts? Is'nt that what reductionism is?
ReplyDeleteIs Feser saying that tables are NOT made of smaller les complex parts?
DeleteNo.
Is'nt that what reductionism is?
No.
WCB
DeleteNo. Google for Internet Encyclopedia Of Philosophy, Reductionism for a primer on what reduction is about.
WCB
Good post, boss!
ReplyDeleteToday, after watching amusing video of Sam Harris humiliating himself spouting nonsense, I found myself also viewing a couple of videos made by a guy who must be one of the most accomplished Christian Psychopaths involved in apologetics - though, it has been quite a long time actually, since I first saw his tour de force performance in a NY subway walk-through and testimony 8 or more years ago. Whether one took seriously what he said or not, one had to respect his ability to manage his presentation which by all appearances was not shot against a green screen (shadows are visible as he walks and moves).
ReplyDeleteIn this video he is initially addressing the glee which some have expressed over the event of his son's death; an event wherein others have taken the opportunity to admonish he and his wife for even having or maintaining a couple of disabled children.
But this snippet is actually about a sub topic: i.e., conditions of proof.
And it is germane because it actually addresses some of the same issues we have seen here recently. Namely, what would constitute sufficient evidence of a particular state of affairs for the skeptic; or relatedly, what state of affairs would have to be realized and would suffice in order to define a key term, and justify the employment of it. That might be a term like, say, "reality", just to pick an example.
In this case the question is what would constitute "proof" of an extraordinary claim for the atheist materialist should an extraordinary event occur; and what could suffice as evidence that the skeptic's basic assumptions and definitions were flawed?
Can they say what conditions would have to be met in order to satisfy the claim?
The linked segment is very short. You want to stay for about 40 seconds to a minute after the adjusted start time.
https://youtu.be/0kw90Eg2jEs?t=3690
"it actually addresses some of the same issues we have seen here recently"
DeleteIndeed. Your linked video provides yet another example of the success of scientific materialist reductionism and the failure of godism.
Prior to the advent of modern scientific materialist reductionism MTM, per the narrator, killed children fairly quickly. Do you suppose Christian parents prayed for the health of their children? Undoubtedly, yet prayers did not cure the disease.
Nor did it do the diseased kids any good to consider the form of the human body, or that change is the actualization of a potential. Such assertions amount to inane and pointless drivel in the face of a deadly childhood disease.
But then came along new generations of people who chose to explain the properties and structures and progressions of the very large as being due to the very small, we reductionists.
And so the human body was explained in terms of the organs. The organs explained in terms of the cells. The cells explained in terms of the organelles and membranes and fluids. All of which were explained in terms of molecules, which were in turn explained in terms of particles and fields.
One molecule in particular has been discovered to account for a very great deal of what the human organism does, DNA. That is how MTM is confirmed, with genetic tests, in other words, molecular analysis used to explain macro level clinical observations.
That Christian may be a psychopath but he is rational enough to realize that the disease will not be cured by prayer or philosophizing about the form of a healthy body or the pointless characterization of change as an actualization of a potential.
Only when parents drive research will a cure be found, and you can be sure that any such cure that may be found will only be determined by scientific materialist reductionist research and applied technology.
Scientists will analyze the very small, the molecules that form the basis of life, and from there they will determine what reduced entities the macro clinical symptoms are due to. The very large will be explained by reduction to the very small.
Then the scientific materialist reductionist method will be applied to alter the very small, alter the molecules, and therefore alter the macro level that the reductionist clearly shows is due to the very small.
That is how the cure the Christian psychopath seeks will be arrived at if it is to be arrived at at all.
There is no prospect of curing MTM through the application of religious or Aristotelian methodologies, if there were any such prospect the disease would have been cured centuries ago.
Is SP just a reductionnist troll or an eliminativist troll? Just to know if we should pay half attention or no attention to his ramblings.
Delete"if we should"
DeleteThe feeling of "should" is a personal sensibility with no objective basis, so, up to you.
A reductionist who does not arrive at being an eliminativist is a bit like a diver who, having jumped off the end of the diving board suddenly wishes to remain suspended in mid air indefinitely so as never to enter the pool below.
But you are not a reductionist because you do not do silly things like fill up your tires with air while attributing pressure to the the motion of molecules, take medicines designed at the molecular level, look at the the beauty of ice crystals as due to intermolecular forces between water molecules, or worry about nuclear explosions as due to neutron fission and nuclear fusion reactions.
You realize, in your great insight and wisdom against reductionism, that the macro is not due to the micro. You don't have any alternative explanations, but you know that silly reductionist materialist science stuff must be wrong somehow.
@SP : sorry, I don't talk with nonexistent people, especially of the eliminativist stupid kind.
DeleteDoes chemistry reduce to physics? Most science fanboys believe this, although as a PhD Organic Chemist this is not my experience. In Cartwright’s excellent book she states that if chemistry reduced to physics their would be a strict demarcation between these fields. In Chemistry there is a sub field known as Physical Chemistry while in Physics there is a sub field known as Chemical Physics. What do you suppose the scientists are studying? The truth is you would be hard pressed to pick up a journal published in either of these two fields and try to tell the articles apart. The only real difference is that some authors come from a Chemistry department while the others work in a Physics department. They are toiling on the exact same scientific problems, they attend the same conferences and read each other’s papers. Where is the line?
ReplyDeleteEven more damning is when Cartwright points out that if Chemistry reduces to Physics then how come the Schrodinger Equation can only be solved for the Hydrogen atom, or Helium ion? There was a great deal of laughter and uproar in the first day or two of Quantum Chemistry class when the Professor pointed out this fact. If Quantum Mechanics is correct as a theory, which it seems to be, then chemical bonding would fall under the domain of the Quantum. Yet as she correctly states in her book, the whole basis of chemical bonding (Born-Oppenheimer Approximation) violates the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Reducing the field of chemical bonding to mostly a classical approach. As a chemist who strictly follows the results of experiment, this doesn’t seem to have tremendous scientific rigor. This flys in the face of the science fanboy’s belief that physics is at the top of the heap in terms of the most “scientifically rigorous” of all the sciences.
That all being said Molecular Biology clearly does reduce to Organic Chemistry, which is the basis of the field of Medicinal Chemistry.
I'm completely out of my depth here, but it's not obvious to me why you'd expect a strict demarcation if chemistry were reducible to physics. I actually would expect the opposite. If there were a strict demarcation between the two fields, that seems to suggest there is some point of discontinuity where you can't express one field using the terms of another. That sort of state of affairs seems much harder for a reductionist to square than a gradual transition.
DeleteYour other example about not being able to express atoms beyond helium using the wave equation seems more like that kind of discontinuity that a reductionist would be appalled by. Assuming that the reason is because the math actually just doesn't work and not because the math is too complicated for us to solve. Again, I'm out of my depth here so I couldn't make any sort of informed opinion about which of those is the case.
The Anonymous at 5.26AM
DeleteThe Schrodinger equation can be solved exactly for the hydrogen atom and helium ion, but for more complicated atomic systems - never mind molecular ones - it is not possible to find exact solutions. This is a mathematical issue though, and hardly indicates that the Shrodinger equation ceases to describe physical reality. What we then do is apply various approximation methods to obtain approximate solutions, just as we would in any other of the myriad situations where a differential equation cannot be solved exactly using analytic methods. Why Tim Cushing thinks this is an embarrassment for reductionism escapes me.
@Anonymous:
Delete"This is a mathematical issue though, and hardly indicates that the Shrodinger equation ceases to describe physical reality. What we then do is apply various approximation methods to obtain approximate solutions, just as we would in any other of the myriad situations where a differential equation cannot be solved exactly using analytic methods."
This is a misleading way of framing the issue. The fact of the matter is that the approximation scheme *itself* uses higher-level principles that resist complete reductionism.
"Approximation", as you seem to be using the term, is just as good as finding an exact solution. If say, H is the quantum hamiltonean acting on the Hilbert state space, and I can solve the proper value problem Hf = Ef with a control on the error term, this is just a proof that the equation has a solution and then all sorts of approximation schemes could be used to compute it. If this, or something close to it, was what was being done, you would have a point, but it's not, so you don't.
@Tim Cushing
DeleteThat there is no clear demarcation between the Journal of Physical Chemistry and the Journal of Chemical Physics is evidence that chemistry reduces to physics. Because it means that there is a gradient from Physics to Chemistry, and gradients happen when there are steps.
That the Schrödinger's Equation has exact solutions only for the Hydrogen Atom and Helium ion, however, is evidence that Chemistry does not reduce to Physics.
The reduction of chemistry to physics is a particularly interesting issue, because it used to be considered a paradigmatic case, but as physics has grown better at explaining chemical phenomena, the confidence among both scientists and philosophers that it can be done at all has taken a nosedive, because the explanations (as used by, say, quantum mechanics) have turned out to be less and less like reductions. They are often only approximate, in ways in which we can't get more precise than the approximation, or depend on features of quantum mechanics that are purely statistical. In addition it has become more and more clear that the classifications that are most useful in chemistry, based on experiments with chemical reactions, are not in exact correspondence with the classifications that you get by pure physical theory, because the same underlying physical basis can sometimes have different results and (even more often) the same results can arise from different physical bases. Chemical phenomena are also sometimes argued to be time-asymmetric in ways that the underlying physical phenomena simply are not. Physical explanations of chemical phenomena have massively improved, but all of the major improvements in recent decades have been with kinds of explanation that are traditionally seen as either nonreductive or only imperfectly reductive because they require that you add higher-level assumptions derived from chemistry to the lower-level physics in order to make the explanation work. It has been fascinating to watch this slowly happen over time, and it has been even more fascinating to see the bonds between chemistry and physics strengthen and develop while making reductive unification less and less likely.
DeleteMy suspicion is that this is very much what we can expect across the board in the near future -- better physics will explain more and more, but in ways that prevent any actual reduction.
Brandon,
Delete"better physics will explain more and more, but in ways that prevent any actual reduction."
Self contradiction.
That is the reduction, explaining more and more.
Before modern atomic theory substances were known to react and change but there was no good explanation for such chemical reactions.
Aristotle was particularly bad at explaining chemical reactions. He went backwards from the Greek Atomists.
The Atomists did much better than Aristotle. Aristotle failed to advance from the Atomists, instead, he went in the wrong direction, toward less realistic understanding.
Aristotle made negative progress from the Atomists by considering substances to be composed of the 4 "elements", earth, water, air, and fire.
A-T contributes nothing to chemistry because the A-T view of chemistry is nonsense.
Physics began to accurately explain chemistry with atomic theories. Mendeleev made his periodic table based on observations at the human level, but it was physics that reduced successfully using the atomic theories of chemistry.
The arrangement of elements in periods was explained by reductionist physics, the physics of electron orbitals.
Bonding was explained by reductionist physics, of electron orbitals, electronegativity, and other reductionist physics theories.
Changes of state, reactions rates and molecular structure are all explained by reductionist physics, the physics of the kinetic theory of thermodynamics, the physics of electron orbitals, the physics of electromagnetic fields.
Of course chemistry reduces to physics. Do you have a modern university chemistry book? If so, just open it up, and there you will find page after page after page explaining chemical properties as due to reductionist physics.
What is your alternative to the reductionist explanation for chemistry?
Angels whizzing around the nucleus?
Aristotle's earth, water, air, and fire?
What?
A-T hasn't explained anything at all about chemistry.
I guess that's how you can show how Stardusty explains. It must be "troll reductionism" : taking something that appears to be clever, and troll over it until it's garbage.
DeleteI especially love his "reductionism = explanation". Impressive troll reductionism. Teach us, ô wonderful thinker...
Anon,
Delete"Teach us, ô wonderful thinker..."
Very well...
Reductionist materialist science has been highly successful at explaining chemistry in terms of physics.
Just open your university chemistry textbook.
In it you will find explanation after explanation, reducing chemistry to physics. Chemistry very evidently does reduce to physics. The evidence is vast and easily available to anybody who has ever taken a chemistry class.
That is not to say that chemistry in total has been, thus far, reduced entirely to physics. Of course not. Human beings are limited. We don't yet have, and likely will never have, complete knowledge in every detail about much of anything.
The fact remains that the periods in the periodic table are explained by reduction to physics.
Chemical analysis using a mass spectrometer or an optical spectrometer reduces to physics.
Changes of state, temperature, pressure, and volume all reduce to physics.
As you get more and more into the subject of chemistry you find more and more effects and parameters, all of which reduce to physics.
Like most teachers my main role is to point you to books and tell you to go study them. Start with your university chemistry textbook.
Surely such books are available to Dr. Feser in Pasadena.
In it you will find chemical equations related to physics equations, diagrams of molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. Discussions of ions, isotopes, forces, energy, dimensions, motions, and changes.
Again and again and again you will read that chemistry is explained by reduction to physics.
And what does A-T explain about chemistry? Nothing whatsoever. Aristotle did not write equations, but when his verbal descriptions are translated into equations those equations are wrong.
Aristotle was wrong about nearly everything regarding motion, change, and the elements.
There is one Aristotelian notion that does sometimes get mentioned in modern chemistry, as a sidebar story about how the ancients misunderstood the elements, and how quaint it is to consider Aristotle and his now silly idea of the 4 elements.
Yet, that is A-T chemistry: earth, water, air, fire.
If you hold to A-T that is the level of your conceptual sophistication.
Lol @SP. You did reply to me?
Delete"Like most teachers my main role is to point you to books and tell you to go study them."
You clearly are a total troll.
You took my ironical question as a genuine one...
"
There is one Aristotelian notion that does sometimes get mentioned in modern chemistry, as a sidebar story about how the ancients misunderstood the elements, and how quaint it is to consider Aristotle and his now silly idea of the 4 elements."
To think that Heinsenberg showed how QM is the return to Hylomorphism over Atomism...
...dude, SP, you're such a sham and a pitiful trollish idiot, it's amazing.
Anon,
Delete"You took my ironical question as a genuine one..."
Quite the opposite.
You took my ironical answer as having mistaken your request as genuine.
Oh, but by all means, do enlighten us as to how chemistry has abandoned atomism in favor of the vague pointless notion of "form", and the Aristotelian notion of earth, water, air, and fire.
Really, chemistry as abandoned atomism because of Heisenberg?
Oh, right, in physics there are no more atoms, right? Every physics professor knows, Aristotle was right all along!!!
Well, a bit of bad news for you, and you can verify this yourself at any university library, or in your own university physics book, but Aristotle is mentioned in modern physics education in 1 of 2 ways.
1.Not at all. This is the most common case. The typical modern physics book does not even mention Aristotle, not even once.
2.As an example of wrong thinking. Typically as a historical sidebar about how ancient people got things wrong and were later shown to be wrong by Galileo, Newton, and the whole of modern science.
This second sort of mention is typical of a high school or conceptual physics text, less common at the university level. Aristotle is used as an example of a person who expressed some common sense ideas that seem like they might be true to the casual observer, but turn out to be false.
Change as the actualization of a potential is a pointless and useless utterance.
Motion does not require a mover.
There is no difference in the principles of motion for sublunary versus heavenly motion.
Materials are not composed of earth, water, air, and fire.
Form is a pointless and useless utterance to describe material.
We account for a very great deal of our macro observations using the atomic model with its details of bonding, electron orbitals, nucleus, and atomic scale forces.
In modern science A-T is a dead letter.
"You took my ironical answer as having mistaken your request as genuine."
DeleteWell, given how stupid you are, it's no wonder.
"Change as the actualization of a potential is a pointless and useless utterance.
Motion does not require a mover."
Great! If I push you over a cliff, I'm glad I'll be able to call it a suicide. But it wouldn't be a waste, since your brain is mostly shit-gunk.
"Oh, right, in physics there are no more atoms, right? Every physics professor knows, Aristotle was right all along!!!"
Modern theory of atoms are VERY different from what the atomists taught. But you don't know it, for you're stuck in antiquity. Don't wail too much on Zeus, he doesn't exist.
"We account for a very great deal of our macro observations using the atomic model with its details of bonding, electron orbitals, nucleus, and atomic scale forces."
Says the guy who doesn't believe in form and matter.
What a joke! :D
"Oh, but by all means, do enlighten us as to how chemistry has abandoned atomism in favor of the vague pointless notion of "form", and the Aristotelian notion of earth, water, air, and fire."
My. Someone ignores what "minima naturalia" is. And someone doesn't know it's closer to the "atomic" model (which is not atomic anymore since atoms are composite) than anything else.
I'm sure you're the guy who could play Russian roulette against yourself and lose. At least, I'd hope so.
Tim,
ReplyDelete"as a PhD Organic Chemist this is not my experience."
Which just goes to show how a person can reach the level of expert in plug and chug without having a clear understanding of the deeper meaning and underlying reality of his field.
Edward Everett, the featured speaker at the dedication ceremony of the National Cemetery of Gettysburg, later wrote to Lincoln, "I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."
My point is that I consider the following from the OP to be of comparable eloquence:
"Still, the idea that whatever is real is somehow ultimately nothing more than what can in principle be described in the language of a completed physics exerts a powerful hold on many."
In particular allow me to turn your attention to:
"...whatever is real is somehow ultimately nothing more than what can in principle be described in the language of a completed physics..."
Here Dr. Feser eloquently states the reductionist claim, that what is real is what can, IN PRINCIPLE, be stated in the language of a COMPLETED PHYSICS.
Despite the hubris and shortsighted conceit of the Copenhagen Interpretation it should be clear to all that our written sets of physics equations and other descriptions is highly incomplete.
OP-"even physics isn’t all physics.”
Now, the humorless might cry contradiction and equivocation, but that is the wry humor of it, after all.
To get the joke one must understand 2 senses of the word "Physics". This same principle, of 2 separate meanings of the same word, applies to "Chemistry", "Biology", and every branch of science:
1.Physics in the sense of the totality of established physics equations and other descriptions.
2.Physics in the sense of, in principle, a completed physics. That is to say, the totality of the true ontological state of affairs of the cosmos at its finest scale.
Thus, your confusion. The strawman that somehow reductionism would mean that the present state of chemistry equations and descriptions would reduce to the present state of physics equations and descriptions. Very obviously it does not. Nobody claims that it does.
Ultimately, you, and Dr. Feser are beating a strawman.
The reductionist claim is that in principle a completed chemistry reduces to in principle a completed physics.
But by all means, what do you consider to be the alternative to reductionist materialism? Do you suppose at base we will find little angels nudging everything along?
You, Dr. Feser, and all the rest provide criticisms that are mere strawman misstatements of the reductionist claim, while ignoring the great progress reductionist scientific techniques have provided thus far, and failing to provide any viable alternative explanation for the base explanatory principles of chemistry, living organisms, or anything else.
Alright. What does it mean "completed physics", SP? If it's "the physics we'll have when it'll be perfect", it's meaningless jargon.
DeleteRealize, at least, that A-T proponents are SHOWING what's missing to physics... at least. Do that bit of intellectual honesty, will you?
You can keep your blinders on and claim that physics will never be complete and that it's, as you once said, "riddled with contradictions". You can even be fine with it.
For us who don't live in your mental asylum, we call this insanity, but you do you, I guess...
Anon,
Delete"What does it mean "completed physics", SP?"
As Dr. Feser alluded to in the OP, the single word "physics" has different meanings in different contexts, leading to the wry joke that "physics isn't physics".
In one sense "physics" is not dependent on human beings, and is the state of affairs of the cosmos. In this sense "physics" is the true ontological underlying reality, the manner in which material exists and progresses, irrespective of our abstractions of it.
In that sense "physics" must already be complete. How could the true reality of all that exists somehow not be complete?
Another sense of "physics" is highly anthropocentric, and refers to the present collection of equations and descriptions on offer, that is, in general circulation. So, the totality of all the physics books and papers and talks, including all the equations and diagrams and descriptions.
Thus, in that sense, "physics" is the combination of human abstractions that attempt to describe the true ontological state of affairs of the underlying existential reality of the cosmos.
The same sorts of distinctions can be made with words like "chemistry" and "biology". Clearly, chemical reactions and biological systems occurred before any human description of them and continue to occur without any human knowledge of them.
When we speak of the fields of chemistry and biology we typically refer to our present state of descriptions of chemistry and biology.
I don't know anybody who asserts that our present descriptions of chemistry and biology can be reduced to our present descriptions of physics. That is a strawman.
You can snicker that such an assertion is silly if you like, pretty easy, because nobody holds that silly position, so you haven't demonstrated any inconsistency among naturalists by defeating that strawman.
The question is whether chemistry and biology reduce to physics in principle. That is, do we have good reason to be convinced that what we describe as chemical and biological processes are "ultimately nothing more than what can in principle be described in the language of a completed physics-OP"?
The answer to that question is a resounding yes. That firm answer of "yes" comes from both the extreme success of the scientific materialist reductionist project, and the utter lack of a coherent or evidenced alternative.
Mountains of evidence show in vast detail of tremendous evidence that macro phenomena are due to entities on the sub-microscopic scale. The more we scientifically and materialistically reduce the more accurate our abstract descriptions of existential reality become.
The supposed alternatives to this ever progressing trend to explain by reduction are nothing more than vague idle speculations about invisible beings.
"A-T proponents are SHOWING what's missing to physics"
Nonsense. A-T provides nothing of any use to physics in any sense. You cannot name any breakthrough or refinement to the field of physics in the last 400 years that came from A-T. In physics, A-T is a dead letter.
The gaps and contradictions in the field of physics today are identified by the scientific materialist reductionists themselves, who are continually criticizing and cross verifying each other.
... And you're proving, once more, that you don't understand how A-T works.
DeleteIs it me or does this post by Ed attract all possible materialistic nutjobs? Never seen so much reductionnist defenders (including SP, but he's so much of a loony it's hard to take him seriously)...
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 5.40 AM
DeleteOh, it is you.
Care to count how many unqualified defenders of reductionism have contributed to this thread so far? Hardly any, yet you have never seen so many🤣
The level.of your own mentality is revealed by your easy use of such insults as 'loony' and 'nutjob' to abuse those who disagree with you. What worth is there in your pathetic 'contribution'?
No it is not you. The quality of materialists who post here is somewhat lacking.
Delete"Is it me or does this post by Ed attract all possible materialistic nutjobs? Never seen so much reductionnist defenders (including SP, but he's so much of a loony it's hard to take him seriously)"
DeleteIt is not just you, and it is not just this posting.
Feser certainly provokes a compulsive response in some atheist and ardent naturalist types, which seems to manifest as a years long obsession. See link at the bottom.
Now, this is, or can be, fairly easily "explained" on the reductionist's own terms: explained as the wholly determined ( or you might even say, conditioned ) response of a supernaturalistically antipathetic organism to a perceived provocation or threat to its ... well, here is where we have to decide where to pause the reduction in order to state what "it" is, before going on to describe any threat to its interests.
Is it a fellow "Scotsman", perhaps? Or, is it just an unwelcome collectivist primate annoyance intruding into a particular social or political arrangement, wherein it must nonetheless, one imagines, or not, be accorded "its rights"?
Shall we go further, and refer to it as a "meat computer", or a skin bag enclosing a cluster of accidentally juxtaposed appetites emitting through a "face"? Or, might it be most useful and most liberating to consider it under the aspect of a chemical process merely presenting the illusion of an autonomous being possessing agency, respectable intentions, and some intrinsic value?
In which latter case, as it lies shivering and emitting moaning noises [atmospheric waves produced by a vibrating larynx- thing which has the effect of producing these effects because it just does] in a ditch some hundreds of yards from where you enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner with your healthy and life competent companions; do bear in mind that it, dwindling helplessly to non-being over there, is basically just an intrinsically meaningless collection, a transitory arrangement, of atoms anyway.
And bear in mind also, insofar as we may say we have minds - or bear in brain then - that taken as a "whole" it may well lack any demonstrable utility value relating to your own [admittedly] illusory purposes.
And remember too, empathy is a projection; and sympathy, based on our now discarded notion of natural kinds and categories, of a supposed objective like-kindedness. Or even worse, God forbid, the obsolete notion of it being somehow objectively like oneself, somehow also made in the image and likeness of God, and having an eternal destiny, other than annihilation.
Given the materialist's own premisses then, it is hard to see what it is getting all emotional and obsessive [and even on occasion politically collectivist] about with regard to Ed Feser's outlook.
Except for the fact of course, that according to its own terms, it just does what it does and must do, and cannot do otherwise; the feature of a face, and the illusion of personhood which that face deceptively presents, notwithstanding.
See,
Dupré on the ideologizing of science. https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/10/dupre-on-ideologizing-of-science.html
By the way, in case I have to restate it, I have no problem with constitutive analysis or even reductionism insofar as it goes. And I suspect that that is the case with most readers. It is the ardent reductionist itself which annoys when it shifts perspective and effectually claims, or insinuates itself to be, something more than its own reductive analysis allows.
And this state of affairs has been more or less the same in the comment boxes that Ed Feser provides, for years upon years.
Thank you.
DeleteI suspect Anon above is an ardent lover or a false name of Stardust. Why does Ed allow people who don't understand the post to reply? It's making the whole affair much harder to understand...
Son of Yakov
DeleteThe post by Anonmyous at 5.40AM bemoaned the sheer number of 'nutjobs' that had appeared defending reductionism in response to Fesers article, NOT to the quality of materialists posting here in general. Please pay a modicum of attention.
Och aye the noo Jimmy!
That's basically the same, Anon. You guys are hopeless.
DeleteSon of Yachov here on mae linux computer.
DeleteAnon 11:40.
If they are "nutjobs" then by definition they are of low quality wither they are numerous or not.
Keep up wee lamb.
Guys, enough of this.
DeleteWCB
ReplyDeleteComte's ambitious Reductionist program has not been achieved. The lesser concept of scientific reduction, understand the whole by understanding the parts is fruitful, but not always perfect, emergent properties often cannot be predicted by understanding the parts. Hydrogen and oxygen are not wet, but together they become water, which within a certain temperature is wet.
And now we come to mereology. The study of relation of parts to a whole. How to understand, Aristotle's hylomorphism? Plato's forms? The Trinity? The simplicity of God? Mereology was one of the most debated subjects in medieval pholiosopy.
And then we have the very complex debates of realism and anti-realism.
In the end, it is all rather silly. You can argle bargle about all of this or go do good science and engineering and ignore the philosophers. Science is pretty pragmatic. Science does what sometimes works despite dead ends and experiments that did not work as expected. That sometimes lead to whole new true science nobody could have imagined.
Like experiments to develop useful microscopes.
WCB
Reductionism has been a valuable and influential approach in science, but it is not without its limitations. Here are some of the key aspects of reductionism, its value in science, and alternative approaches:
ReplyDeleteValue of Reductionism:
1 Simplicity and Understanding: Reductionism seeks to simplify complex phenomena by breaking them down into simpler, more fundamental components. This can make it easier to understand and study complex systems.
2 Interdisciplinary Connections: Reductionism fosters connections between different scientific disciplines. For example, it allows biology to connect with chemistry and physics, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of natural phenomena.
3 Predictive Power: By reducing complex phenomena to fundamental principles, reductionism often leads to greater predictive power. Understanding the underlying principles allows scientists to make predictions and design experiments.
Limitations of Reductionism:
1 Loss of Emergent Properties: Reductionism can sometimes oversimplify complex systems to the point where emergent properties, which arise from the interactions of components, are overlooked. These emergent properties are often critical to understanding real-world phenomena.
2 Incompleteness: Reductionism may not provide a complete picture of the natural world. Some phenomena may not be fully explainable by reductionist principles, particularly in areas like complex systems, psychology, and social sciences.
3 Ignoring Context: Reductionism may ignore the contextual and holistic aspects of a system. It may not consider the interactions and dependencies that occur in a real-world setting.
Holism as an Alternative:
Holism is the opposite of reductionism and emphasizes the importance of understanding systems as a whole, rather than just their individual components. Some key aspects of holism are:
1 Systemic Perspective: Holism looks at the entire system and its interactions, considering the emergent properties that arise from these interactions.
2 Contextual Understanding: Holistic approaches consider the broader context in which a system operates, including environmental, cultural, and social factors.
3 Complex Systems: Holism is particularly relevant in the study of complex systems, where the behavior of the whole cannot be predicted by simply understanding the behavior of individual parts.
4 Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Holistic approaches often require collaboration between different scientific disciplines to understand the interconnectedness of systems.
In practice, both reductionism and holism have their places in science, and their value depends on the specific context and the level of analysis needed. Many scientific problems benefit from a combination of reductionist and holistic approaches. For example, in biology, reductionist approaches help us understand molecular and cellular mechanisms, while holistic approaches are essential for understanding the behavior of entire organisms and ecosystems.
In summary, reductionism and holism are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They represent different levels of analysis and can be used in complementary ways to deepen our understanding of the natural world. The choice between these approaches depends on the specific scientific questions and goals.
I am not tech savvy. Can someone post a ChatGPT reply to that ChatGPT post?
DeleteI think this should be deleted as spam. ChatGPT3.5, while going places, is still not seaworthy.
DeleteNo need for tech savvy in this case.
DeleteHolism is not an alternative explanation for what accounts for macro properties or macro system behavior.
That would be a pointless tautology, that macro behavior is due to macro behavior.
Only reductionism is explanatory. Macro behavior is due to the aggregate of sub-microscopic behaviors.
If you don't understand the vast evidence for reductionism then you are truly ignorant of the great successes of the scientific materialist reductionist project, the vast evidences you enjoy every day of your scientifically reductionist materialist assisted life.
Of course the system is due to its parts. Are you daft? Duh. What, do you suppose the explanation is demons and angels and ghosts?
Haha, StarDusty very amusing and also spot on in his last paragraph at 6.45AM above.
DeleteSP, you overstate the case for reductionism. Here is an excerpt from the wiki article on Emergence (in science):
DeleteNovelist Arthur Koestler used the metaphor of Janus (a symbol of the unity underlying complements like open/shut, peace/war) to illustrate how the two perspectives (strong vs. weak or holistic vs. reductionistic) should be treated as non-exclusive, and should work together to address the issues of emergence. Theoretical physicist PW Anderson states it this way:
"The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts."
Meanwhile, others have worked towards developing analytical evidence of strong emergence. Renormalization methods in theoretical physics enable physicists to study critical phenomena that are not tractable as the combination of their parts.[20] In 2009, Gu et al. presented a class of infinite physical systems that exhibits non-computable macroscopic properties. More precisely, if one could compute certain macroscopic properties of these systems from the microscopic description of these systems, then one would be able to solve computational problems known to be undecidable in computer science. These results concern infinite systems, finite systems being considered computable. However, macroscopic concepts which only apply in the limit of infinite systems, such as phase transitions and the renormalization group, are important for understanding and modeling real, finite physical systems. Gu et al. concluded that
"Although macroscopic concepts are essential for understanding our world, much of fundamental physics has been devoted to the search for a 'theory of everything', a set of equations that perfectly describe the behavior of all fundamental particles. The view that this is the goal of science rests in part on the rationale that such a theory would allow us to derive the behavior of all macroscopic concepts, at least in principle. The evidence we have presented suggests that this view may be overly optimistic. A 'theory of everything' is one of many components necessary for complete understanding of the universe, but is not necessarily the only one. The development of macroscopic laws from first principles may involve more than just systematic logic, and could require conjectures suggested by experiments, simulations or insight."
Stardusty... you know that repeating your delusions over and over, as if you were making a point, doesn't really accomplish anything, besides confirming you're a deluded one?
Delete"The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity."
DeleteFalse. Those "difficulties" are a matter of human capabilities, which are irrelevant to reversing reductionism, that is, constructionism.
Of course human beings cannot model the entire universe from fundamental physics descriptions. We are finite beings.
Our finite capabilities are irrelevant to the constructionist principle.
"At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear."
Begging the question. That is just what the reductionist denies. Such "new" properties are merely abstractions that finite beings use to function in a cosmos far too complex to model in precise detail.
"Emergent" properties are eliminated, in principle, as merely approximations of aggregates of myriad submicroscopic entities.
"Renormalization methods in theoretical physics enable physicists to study critical phenomena that are not tractable as the combination of their parts."
Right, "tractable". Humanly expressible. The cosmos proceeds in its vast complexity independent of our limited capacity to express such progressions in precise detail.
The denial of reductionism is largely an exercise in anthropocentric egotism.
If you can't reduce it then it does not reduce.
Rather childish, in the sense that a child begins life as the center of his own universe, and to some extent never entirely grows out of that perspective.
@StardustyPsyche
DeleteRather childish, in the sense that a child begins life as the center of his own universe, and to some extent never entirely grows out of that perspective.
Young children are anthropomorphic thinkers, not narcissistic thinkers. And they're actually very good at picking out future-oriented media (all the 8-year-olds in my generation loved the original indigo league Pokémon anime with Ash Ketchum). It takes adults to train them how to like past-oriented media like Star Wars or Sonic.
How to think like SP, in 7 easy steps:
Delete1. Assert things that Prof. Feser didn't say.
2. Keep pushing debilitating reductionnism/eliminativism.
3. Argue that other views are riddled with contradictions, shun them by calling "childish" and so. Especially if you don't understand them.
4. When faced with the charge of incoherence, double down.
5. When doubling down doesn't suffice, argue for pathos : we're insignificant in the universe (even though significance is not defined), the beauty of the discovery (even though beauty has been eliminated), we're too childish (even though there is no "true" view in this world).
6. Add word salad, serve.
7. Go back to 1. for another comment, picked at random.
Anon,
Delete"How to think like SP, in 7 easy steps:"
Yet you provide no specific examples for any of your points 1 through 7, rendering them merely vague and unreferenced strawmen.
For example:
"1. Assert things that Prof. Feser didn't say."
Lie.
Dr. Feser did in fact say
"...the idea that whatever is real is somehow ultimately nothing more than what can in principle be described in the language of a completed physics..."
All you have to do is read the OP. Those are his exact words, and rather eloquently put, in my opinion.
Indeed, reductionism, properly characterized, is the contention that everything reduces, ultimately, to nothing more that what can ***in principle*** be described in the language of a ***completed*** physics.
All the further complaints by Dr. Feser, Cartwright, and all the rest, are merely swats at strawmen.
Nobody I know of says the present field of chemistry reduces to the present field of physics. Such a claim would be patently false. Such a claim is irrelevant to reductionism.
Dr. Feser starts out with a fine succinct characterization of reductionism, but he then cites Cartwright in a manner that forgets or ignores his very own words!
"The first and more ambitious of them argues that chemistry as a discipline rests on classificatory and methodological assumptions that are simply sui generis and make the features of the world it uncovers irreducible to those uncovered by physics."-OP
Strawman. "Chemistry as a discipline" relating to "uncovered by physics" is irrelevant to ***in principle*** a ***completed*** physics.
"This recapitulates a longtime theme in Cartwright’s work over the decades, viz. that the mathematical models and laws of physics are idealized and simplified abstractions from concrete physical reality, and do not themselves constitute or capture concrete physical reality."-OP
Strawman. Of course the present set of mathematical models is ***incomplete*** and therefore a strawman against reductionism.
"In short, reductionism, Cartwright judges, is poorly defined and poorly argued for."-OP
Nonsense. Dr. Feser did a fine job of defining reductionism and then proceeded to use only strawmen against it.
The poor argumentation is all on the other side, that of poorly using strawmen to poorly argue against reductionism.
Soon, SP will discover Hempel's dilemma.Keep it up, troll guy, you're on the good track!
DeleteHempel's dilemma is a clear example of:
DeleteWhile one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole That he's in
By confusing and conflating the highly evidenced inductive reasoning of physicalism with the unevidenced idle speculation of faith based idealism Hempel refuses to raise himself to my level, rather, Hempel tries to drag me down into the hole he's in.
Hempel has no evidence for his undefined and unevidenced realm of fantasy faith in some murky blurted out utterance of idealism, so he dishonestly or ignorantly fails to see the vast evidence for scientific materialist reductionism.
The idealist points to the corners of unsolved scientific problems and declares victory, as if his arm waving vacuous blurting somehow forms a default position.
No description of "mind" or "soul" or "immaterial" is ever provided. No hint is ever provided as to how "mind" stores memories, reasons, or interacts so strongly with material, yet somehow still remains undetectable.
Life truly is, but a dream, for Hempel.
If you really believe your life is just part of a shared dream, that material is at base merely "mind", then by all means I invite you to hold your breath, permanently, after all, you don't need air, physicists cannot tell you what air is made of ultimately, therefore your faith that all is mind is just as good as the "faith" in materialism.
So, by all means, I invite you to exhibit the courage of your idealist convictions, don't bother eating, drinking, or breathing, after all, it is all just a manifestation of the ultimate reality, mind.
"faith based idealism" from Hempel?
DeleteThis one is the BEST from SP. SP, you're so much a goof and a sham, you couldn't be wronger. Do another one! :'D
Anon,
Delete"you couldn't be wronger."
That is how Hempel's "dilemma" is used by immaterialists.
"The thesis of physicalism would seem to require a language in which a true theory of all physical phenomena can be formulated. But it is quite unclear what is to be understood here by a physical phenomenon, especially in the context of a doctrine that has taken a decidedly linguistic turn."
Immaterialists then go on to assert this is somehow evidence against physicalism, as if the true ontology of the cosmos was somehow dependent on our ability to describe it.
Immaterialists cannot describe the "soul", or "immaterial" at all. There are no equations even of the most approximate sort to describe "immaterial". There are no descriptions of its structure, where it is, what it is, how it changes, how it interacts with material, or anything else.
The term "immaterial" is just a verbal blob, a vacuous utterance that explains nothing.
"The term "immaterial" is just a verbal blob, a vacuous utterance that explains nothing."
DeleteSays the goof who doesn't see that Hempel applies to his stupid speech. Go on, idiot, show me how "physicalism" is better than "immaterialism".
In modern physic theories, you can replace "atoms" or "matter" by "gremlins", "ideas", "orcs", and it will work all the same, doofus.
You're a sham, SP. And you're just bluffing your stupidity. Learn some epistemology and die impaled on the metaphysics you're glued to, idiot ("maaatter! matter!", "physicalism"... lol). You're a joke. :P
"Holism as an Alternative:
ReplyDeleteHolism is the opposite of reductionism and emphasizes the importance of understanding systems as a whole ..."
Holism will be familiar to anyone who has studied psychology or biology or the so-called human sciences, which attempt to treat the organic system while avoiding the tendency toward a reductionist "nothing butism": a reduction which poses the danger of the operator Iosing sight of the very phenomenon he purports to study.
The criticisms of holism both modest and overblown, are too well known to go into, but at some level of systems analysis it seems necessary to adopt that perspective in order to rationally justify interventions, or "corrections", which otherwise reduce to acts of either free floating and arbitrary will, or, paradoxically, mindless, deterministic, behavior.
It is one thing to replace talk therapy with drugs in the psychiatric armamentarium; but use of the drugs themselves assumes a homeostatic state of proper functioning to be aimed at. Well, usually, unless you are just trying to stupefy the annoying for your own convenience.
Now, for elimnativists this loss of global focus may not seem to be much of a problem at all; until the reductive acids begin to eat away at their own coherence, or to further liberate others to reduce them to instrumental matter. And, why not? Like the progressive schoolmarm whose apartment is being burned down by the feral children she morally whelped, they have no justifiable reason to complain.
All the same, we do see an increasing tendency on the part of those who reject teleology because they believe it has indicative as well as descriptive normative implications they dislike, to elevate and celebrate their dysfunctions.
They do this while comically insisting, for some mysterious reason best known to themselves, that they are somehow entitled to social inclusion, accomodation, and human affirmation on the basis of like-kind and common humanity premisses which they have already notoriously jettisoned in principle.
In my argument (following Prof. Cartwright’s) for the distinction between chemical physics and physical chemistry, someone asked why do you need a sharp line? Because if chemistry reduces to physics at some point you must absolutely be doing just physics. So what kind of science are the physical chemists and the chemical physicists actually doing? The physicists are doing physics, since they work in a physics department while the chemists are doing chemistry since they are working in a chemistry department. But if you asked them about this, they would laugh and say they are doing science.
ReplyDeleteMost of this idea of reductionism is like this. I mentioned before that Molecular Biology in a sense reduces to Chemistry, which is why you can go to the doctor and get a small molecule drug to alleviate some medical issue. The Molecular Biologists would admit that their field reduces to Chemistry, but they just don’t care, they are not interested in how a kinase phosphorylates another protein, they are more interested in how all these proteins are functioning on a higher level -the bigger picture.
Some one said, that scientists don’t see the bigger picture, now there is some truth to this as scientists are having too much fun discovering some unknown truth about the world. It is quite a kick to discover something true/beautiful that no one else in the world knows. You later reveal this and it gets confirmed and you become famous, or not. Haha.
However on reflection, after some years scientists develop a reasonable grasp of the larger picture, especially if they read a bit in philosophy, like “Aristotle’s Revenge”.
But science fanboys won’t because they are too hard, they would rather read some rubbish by these foolish physicists and Neuroscientists, who don’t have clue about the philosophy that undergirds or destroys their ideas. It is a joy to see Prof. Feser take down these people.
Someone, I think named Anonymous (lots of them here) objected to my argument using the Schrodinger equation, as an example of the impossibility of chemistry reducing to physics. They pointed out that it is a differential equation and there are limitations to this kind of math. Exactly, the point.
ReplyDelete‘’ that the mathematical models and laws of physics are idealized and simplified abstractions from concrete physical reality, and do not themselves constitute or capture concrete physical reality.”
Physicists are trying to cram the square peg of reality into the round hole of Mathematics. It doesn’t exactly fit. Solving the differential equation for the hydrogen atom gives several correct solutions, so which one correctly corresponds to the case in hand? You have to determine this by inspection of the other solutions and then discard the ones that make no sense.
But, why if there is a perfect correspondence to math and physics are you allowed to do this?
This is the reductionist claim about physics. According to the science fanboys, We live in a world that should be ruled by these equations and axioms of physics. Once physics is complete the mathematical perfection will be revealed.
Now this brings us back to quantum mechanics. There are thousands of experiments that point to this theory being correct. You could describe it thus:
1 If Quantum Mechanics is true and quantum mechanics describes all of the behavior of particles contained in the atom,
2.Then Quantum Mechanics should be able to describe in mathematical terms the nature of the covalent bond (chemistry)
3. But The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle...
4. Therefore physics (quantum mechanics) fails to tell us about the nature of the chemical bond in full.
Because of this paradox/conundrum, FAILING of Physics, chemists have to use approximation methods or models.
Prof. Cartwright discusses this on page 106 of her book. To describe chemical bonding we have to separate the nuclear wave function from the electronic wave function in the Schrodinger equation. It is also required that the nuclei has a fixed spatial position. This makes to atom essentially a Bohr atom, a classical not Quantum approach, because it violates the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Chemists have developed multiple theories of chemical bonding from Linus Pauling’s Valence Bond Theory, to Molecular Orbital Theory or Perturbation Theory. All theories are useful and work in different settings and analyses.
The bottom line, one of the premier theories of physics; Quantum Mechanics is unable IN PRINCIPLE to describe chemical bonding, therefore chemistry does not in principle reduce to physics.
@Tim Cushing
DeletePerturbation Theory is a wide range of mathematical techniques for solving unsolvable problems and normalizing infinities. Its most sophisticated form happens in Quantum Field Theory, but it also happens in chemistry too. Despite its name, there actually isn't a formal mathematical theory for Perturbation Theory. In fact, one of the six millennium problems (Yang-Mills) in pure mathematics concerns itself with finding a sound theory for Perturbation Theory.
Its greatest anomaly is that it fails for the type of equations that happen in General Relativity.
"According to the science fanboys, We live in a world that should be ruled by these equations and axioms of physics. Once physics is complete the mathematical perfection will be revealed."
DeleteAlthough the issue of the gaps and unresolvability problems are relevant and perhaps even conditioning from a certain perspective, I think that the last four words when lifted slightly from their specific physical explanation context and elevated to a broader sociopolitical domain, really tell the tale of what is at stake in quotidian terms.
Reductive, or perhaps constituative, analysis, is, you know, just what it is. One might simply shrug and say, "so far, so good, and so what?" if it were not for the nearly sexual excitement exhibited by the giddy infantilized "science fanboys" for what they seem to view as the potential social dominance prospects offered by a regime of scientism, and for their role in it as acolytes, managers, archgeeks, and final arbitrators of value.
The problem then, develops when their nuts and bolts and atoms analysis morphs into a smirking nothing but-ism, and that "nothing butism" lens is then polemically focused by them on humanity itself as part of a rhetorical strategy.
That leaves them, these Low Verbal Intelligence Types (as J. Peterson characterizes them) with a bit of a problem themselves however, once some observant bystander gets the idea of constructing a categorical syllogism featuring both humanity as characterized by the nothing butist, and the smirking nothing butist[s] itself [themselves] as terms in the major and minor premisses. Resulting, as we all know, in a conclusion wherein they and theirs are themselves thereby instantly "disenchanted" and reduced, as is fitting and proper, to instrumentally available matter.
While this redounding consequence is probably not a problem for some LVI nothing butists, it is certainly of no concern for the observer as he gazes indifferently upon the results of their self-reduction; as it will be what it will be ... or, at least, what it is bound and determined to be.
DNW
DeleteWhy do you write in such a bizarre manner? And why do you always repeat exactly the same sociopathic theme in all your contributions?
Perhaps because some materialist idiots, very vocal in these comments, are doing sociopathic repeats of their insane mantra?
DeleteThanks “HolyKnowing” Google is great isn’t it?
ReplyDeleteThank you for blessing my ability to use Google. That itself is a talent.
DeleteYes, H.K. You are very talented.
DeleteTim,
ReplyDelete"This is the reductionist claim about physics. According to the science fanboys, We live in a world that should be ruled by these equations and axioms of physics."
That is your strawman, based on your misunderstanding. At least Dr. Feser made some attempt to accurately characterize reductionism at the top of the OP.
Very obviously the present state of mathematical descriptions of physics is highly incomplete, a set of approximations at best.
The same is obvious of the fields of biology and chemistry.
Your strawman is to claim that reductionism somehow expects incomplete chemistry descriptions to reduce to incomplete physics descriptions.
"...whatever is real is somehow ultimately nothing more than what can in principle be described in the language of a completed physics..."-OP
Completed.
Read it. Understand it. Keep it in mind.
Like so many posts Dr. Feser makes, he starts out with a seemingly good faith characterization of the opposing view, then forgets or ignores or confuses, or conflates; dissembling into swatting strawmen with great blows.
You didn't even begin with an accurate characterization of reductionism, rather, you just went straight to the strawmen.
Physics in the sense of the state of affairs of the cosmos, the manner in which material exists and progresses irrespective of our abstractions and descriptions of it.
Chemistry in the same sense.
Biology in the same sense.
The reductionist claim is that biology reduces to chemistry, and chemistry reduces to physics in the ontological state of affairs senses of those words, not in the human fields of study senses of those words.
Pointing out this or that gap in some mathematical model is a truly pathetic counter to the reductionist claim.
Translated from SP's nonsense : "Well, physics is the correct way, because otherwise, physics wouldn't be the correct way."
DeleteWCB
ReplyDeleteAugust Comte's Positivism was a bold idea that turned out to be unrealistic. All science could not be reduced to a few laws based on physics.
Science has given us knowledge by observation, and experimentation. We cannot by mere metaphysical reasoning find a short cut to that.
We cannot reason our way to understanding lower levels of physics that are still mysteries. Or reason our way to understanding emergent phenomena on metaphysical principles. And that is that.
Scientific speculation based on extrapolation from well established facts is part of science, but must be ruthlessly tested by experimentation. Which sometimes suprises us with uncovering science facts we did not expect.
One good telescope, microscope or particle accelerator is worth more than a million metaphysics books.
Shut up and experiment!
WCB
Experiment what?
DeleteI disagree with your stance. As a scientist, a CS researcher, I don't "shut up and experiment". Nor do I "speculate".
Science works with a method, sure, but it's not the extreme of throwing things at random and hoping something sticks, nor the other extreme of thinking until reality happens.
It's thinking and experimenting at the same time.
And for your remark "We cannot by mere metaphysical reasoning find a short cut to that." : that's good. Metaphysical reasoning is primer to all observation and experimentation, since it will let you derives WHAT you can study. How can you study a particle if you don't know what it is?
Only a "neutral" metaphysics, such as A-T metaphysics, allows you to do that. Otherwise, let's say, when I run a computational physics experiment, how will I be able to tell that I'm *really* working on a particle field, and not a particle, since both results would be explained with a different object? Should I blindly believe a crude materialist position of "atoms", and shoehorn a virtual particle there, or should I find a more elegant (and simpler) way of expressing the field as a string vibration?
It's amazing on how many people here are running to defend their view of "what fundamental Being is": idealist will claim it's ideas, materialists will claim it's matter, marxists will call for "the radical oppression between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie", and who cares about the rest? Only one guy was open minded enough to offer something flexible that would fit all the framework, and that guy came up with matter and form.
Doin a lot of metaphysics there bud
Delete"Experiment what?... As a scientist, a CS researcher, I don't "shut up and experiment". ...
DeleteScience works with a method, sure, but it's not the extreme of throwing things at random and hoping something sticks ..."
Yeah, it become pretty obvious even to non scientists that the scientific enterprise involves more than those "mere empiricism" formulae we encountered in our middle school text books. Those were descriptions which in their anthem-like presentions might leave one with the impression that doing science was a matter of fiddling around with stuff while taking careful measurements and notes: of whatever it was that was there or was happening ... if you had any idea of what any of that was.
Apparently there is usually the little matter of a problem or question to be solved or resolved, within a particular framework of underlying assumptions which might or might not prove to be themselves problematical.
Hence all of the hypothesis and theory business that follows on in short order.
But why should you formulate a hypothesis, or accept a theory in the first place?
So, you are sitting at a bench in front of your microscope, and you are handed a scalpel and forceps, a petri dish, and a frog, fresh or soaked in formaldehyde by the teaching assistant. Throw in a battery and a couple of wires. Now what ...
WCB
Delete"If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is … If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it."
- Richard Feynman
Anybody who has suffered a Windows update that broke a lot of stuuf knows CS needs more experimenting.
WCB
Anon,
Delete"Only a "neutral" metaphysics, such as A-T metaphysics, allows you to do that. "
You are not a scientist doing research based on A-T metaphysics. I know that because there is no such process.
A-T provides no insights for modern scientific experiments.
The assertion that change is the actualization of a potential is pointless drivel in any modern physics experiment. All that inane observation states is that things happen only when they can happen, and we never see things happen that can't happen.
"should I find a more elegant (and simpler) way of expressing the field as a string vibration?"
A-T contributes nothing to string theory, or any other modern physics theory.
"that guy came up with matter and form."
Material has properties. No kidding. how obvious. The Atomists did much better. Aristotle went backwards.
I turns out that Aristotle was wrong about nearly everything in science. Wrong about motion. Wrong about change. Wrong about the 4 elements. Wrong about his categories.
The primary value of Aristotle in modern physics is to use as an example to students of the many ways ancient people got things wrong.
Just read any modern physics textbook. Most do not even mention Aristotle, or if he is mentioned it is in the context of using him as an example of ideas that have since been shown to be wrong.
Yup, Doing a lot of very serious metaphysics here.
Delete"Material has properties. No kidding. how obvious. The Atomists did much better. Aristotle went backwards."
DeleteNope.
"I turns out that Aristotle was wrong about nearly everything in science. Wrong about motion. Wrong about change. Wrong about the 4 elements. Wrong about his categories."
Nope. He was an empirist (contra your ass kissing atomists, who were pure rationalists). He was right about motion and change. And he was right about his categories. And he didn't reduce matter to quantitative properties. Your idols CREATED the hard problem of consciousness, idiot.
Your atomists, especially Democritus, loved to picture the Earth as flat.
"The primary value of Aristotle in modern physics is to use as an example to students of the many ways ancient people got things wrong."
Nope. But your primary value here is to show how much materialists are stupid. And that's easy how big of a sham and a fart sniffer you are.
@Anonymous
DeleteAristotle was an extraverted thinker, not an empiricist. The evidence of this is that he relied on traditional received wisdom, which started with the presupposition that the earth, air, fire, and water were the building blocks of everything. Why? Because that was the received wisdom of the ancient world.
Logic is extraverted thinking, and like all extraverted thinking, it relies on the principle of garbage in, garbage out.
Empiricism is introverted thinking, and while it has some problems (how can knowledge of past instances tell you anything about the future?), it is much better than logic. Logic only works when you live in a perfect universe where everyone shares the correct stories.
@HK : lol.
DeleteYou're offering "bare sensualist empiricism". Try doing that kind of bad empiricism without any recourse to logic.
Once you're done with it, tell me why I should believe you -- without using logic, substance or metaphysics.
You'll them realize what kind of empiricism Aristotle used, and why it's superior.
Only bad metaphysicians say that they magically have access to their mode of being of choice ("atoms", "matter", "ideas")... and ask you to believe blindly in it.
Think over it. If you claim that "it is must better than logic", you can use empiricism and see why Ari was right.
WCB
DeleteAristotle's empiricism was very limited. Aristotle had no micrscope, no telescope, and was thus limited to what one could see with the naked eye. Aristotle knew no real physics. No chemistry, nothing about biochemistry, nothing about the four great forces. Nothing about quantum physics. And had no way of finding out about these things.
And metaphysics and logic alone cannot supply these things, the real world empirical realities.
True empiricism relies on technology to allow mankind to extend his senses to observe the Universe in great detail.
As we speak, the James Webb Space Telescope is sending us photos of the Universe in unprecedented detail, full of surprises. We cannot guess about these things. We have to observe them. Then we can reason successfully about it all.
WCB
@WCB : very well. Prove to me that atoms/molecules/things exist, and I'm on board.
DeleteWhat?
You can't?
Well, then, we're at two hands, here. Either you admit they're convenient fictions, either you accept them by faith (with something like 99.9999% confidence, due to... to... ah, "Real Physics (TM)" - sounds like "Real God" or "Real Religion").
When you'll find that these two alternatives are equally ridiculous, you'll find out why Ari's paradigm is superior; because it allows to postulate the existence of entities as certain.
Also, da fuk about you putting "WCB" at the start/end of your messages? Are you that self-centered, or what?
Also, da fuk about you putting "WCB" at the start/end of your messages? Are you that self-centered, or what?
DeleteI wish every Anonymous would do that, since it makes it far easier to tell which person is speaking.
Yes 'Anomymous' at 3.07PM, what exactly is your point in berating WCB here? Your allegation that WCB clearly labelling his generally excellent contributions indicates his self centredness says more about your psychology than his.
DeleteWell, if he wants to be known, he can put a name or register an account.
DeleteAlso... "generally excellent contributions"... I guess that, given the average level of stupidity and misunderstanding by atheists, having one who's only wrong about 95% instead of 99% is somewhat "excellent". I mean, it's like having a creationnist saying "well, evolution is wrong, but it's not because a monkey gave birth to a human". But you go you, anon. You pat yourself on the back -- if you're not another false nose of SP or WCB.
" Prove to me that atoms/molecules/things exist, and I'm on board."
DeleteUhm, seriously?
Or do you mean instead of "prove", rather, "provide mountains of evidence"? Science doesn't do "proof".
Atoms and molecules were detected and modeled for about a century before atoms were directly imaged. One famous example is when researchers at IBM used an STM to spell out those letters, using individual atoms.
https://cen.acs.org/analytical-chemistry/imaging/30-years-moving-atoms-scanning/97/i44
"Ari's paradigm is superior; because it allows to postulate the existence of entities as certain."
So, just asserting made up stuff like forms, hierarchical linear one way causality, earth-water-air-fire, then just blurting out your certainty, is so very superior to doing the research, measurements, modeling, and confirmations of science?
Well, I suppose you find comfort in declaring your fantasies as certainties, a lot of people are like that.
Anonymous at 8.49AM
DeleteBoth WCB and SP are very outspoken and not at all phased by the obnoxious and abusive manner of some theists on here ( and DNW - we still do not know what his theological convictions are, just that he hates naturalists ). I cannot imagine that either posts under other names, or 'false nose' as you put it.
Incidentally, both WCB and SP are generally very polite and behave admirably in the face of frequently ill-mannered attack, though of course, being human, they will occasionally hit back defensively.They are an example to be followed for you all.
@SP :
Delete"Or do you mean instead of "prove", rather, "provide mountains of evidence"? Science doesn't do "proof"."
Anticipated your stupid reply : "with something like 99.9999% confidence". lol.
There's one reason people like you fail and flunk epistemology and metaphysics. And a reason why you fail physics.
"Atoms and molecules were detected and modeled for about a century before atoms were directly imaged. One famous example is when researchers at IBM used an STM to spell out those letters, using individual atoms.
https://cen.acs.org/analytical-chemistry/imaging/30-years-moving-atoms-scanning/97/i44"
Your example shows that Aristotle was right, since all matter is is composed. Even elemental particles are COMPOUNDs, you ignoramus. You've never heard of minima naturalia nor of how the modern atom model was born (nor what it was born from).
I hope I can meet you IRL one day. I long to punch you so hard I want to break a bone doing so, giving how idiotic and trollish you are.
@Anon
"Both WCB and SP are very outspoken and not at all phased by the obnoxious and abusive manner of some theists on here" : both are ignorant and spouting nonsense over and over. SP's level of knowledge of A-T is of the level of "duur monke don't birth humans" of creationist idea of evolution.
"Incidentally, both WCB and SP are generally very polite and behave admirably in the face of frequently ill-mannered attack, though of course, being human, they will occasionally hit back defensively.They are an example to be followed for you all." : you know, in real life, if I meet some doofus dingus like either of them, I ignore them.
If they keep talking shit and nonsense, even with flowers, I warn them that they're telling shit.
And if they still talk nonsense, I use a more "direct" approach.
Both are trolls, banned by Feser, who have no respect for his word. I don't have to respect people who troll.
Now, if you want to keep circlejerking with them like the good retarded atheistard, go on.
Feser
DeletePlease read the 'contribution' from Anomymous' at 2.15PM above, which I simply do not believe that you have done so far, despite letting it through.
Do you think that threats of physical violence have a place in your combox? Here is what this Anonymous has to say to StarDusty, among other things.
'I hope that I can meet you IRL one day. I long to punch you so hard I want to break a bone doing so, given how idiotic and trollish you are.'
This particular Anonymous is clearly a nutter. If you can identify his contributions somehow, you should ban him.
No, I did not see that remark. Anon at 2:15, please knock it off with that kind of stuff.
DeleteWhile Ed is the boss of his blog, I'm partially agreeing with Anon at 2:15.
DeleteIf SP and WCB views are so nutty, how come Ed leaves them here? Why nobody replies to them?
AOP.
Anonymous at 11.29PM
DeleteThe fact is ,the views of SP and WCB are not nutty, just in tension with the ones promulgated by the 'in crowd' of this combox, some of whom are indeed nutty, as well as obnoxious.Their frequent insults and ad hominems, and their demands for banning and censorship, do not constitute arguments.
Their frequent insults and ad hominems, and their demands for banning and censorship, do not constitute arguments.
DeleteThey don't constitute arguments, but also at some point if a commenter refuses to acknowledge when they are blatantly wrong, if they frequently are condescending, if they basically copy/paste the same argument that hasn't worked for literally years, if they intentionally violate basic grammatical rules to be petty and disrespectful, if they do silly things like change definitions of words and then accuse others of being wrong for not also changing, and on and on...for years...
Then at some point people familiar with the situation are not going to politely engage in good faith. Why would they? What possible gain is there?
And if you somehow have missed all these behaviors, then I don't know what to tell you. You're seeing what you want to see based on your agreement or disagreement of a topic, rather than the behavior of the individual, which is further evidenced by your apparent failure to recognize that there is a HUGE gulf between the quality of discourse offered by the two commenters you mention. One is at least capable of offering mature feedback. I've never witnessed it in the other.
Disagreement is where beliefs are sharpened, so I value a community with various viewpoints even if others don't. But you can't sharpen an idea bouncing it off foolishness and scorn. That's why I don't even bother reading SP's posts anymore, but I do read WCB.
“Life is motion driven by purposes”. It is a very short definition that captures the essence of life: motion and purpose. Although purpose is a strong force, it is not a physical force. Purposes cannot be measured. Purposes cannot be mathematically modeled. purposes cannot be subject to experiment. That is why science ends up with definitions of life that are substantially longer than this one.
ReplyDeleteI recently finished reading Cartwright's "superb" book, and I just gotta say (imho): no, it's not superb. There are bits that are interesting, thought-provoking, worth reading; but others that are just hand-waving, jejune, pretentious, and silly. I get the sense that Cartwright hasn't really grasped what science is, in particular the very fundamental point that there is no science of particulars. Nor does she understand the nature of our fundamental epistemic limitations in the world we live and act in, and how those limitations are inherent to and ineliminable from both science and engineering.
ReplyDelete