New rule: no new ideas after two hours!
This time we talked about the idea of emergence and naturally, its counterpart, reductionism. Of course, supervenience was all thinking it’s host to this party like Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters, “Hiya doin’! Why don’t you have some of the brie. It’s at room temperature. You think it’s too warm in here for the brie?” But never mind, we soon bailed on that party.
Nearly as many names get dropped as threads in this full-on geek-out sesh on radical metaphysics. Make no mistake, we wrestle with the big ideas– and this tag-team don’t tap-out. Nevertheless, the ideas usually get us on points.
Our number one fan brought a friend. Things are really starting to get going.
2 Comments
Adam · January 23, 2019 at 1:35 pm
I may just be dense here but … does a reductionist really need to say that chairs don’t really exist, only particles do? I’ve always resolved this–and perhaps I am missing something big–by saying “chairs just are organized collections of particles”. I claim both exist … because they’re equal to each other. A chair is a certain organization of particles and since the particles exist in that organization, therefore the chair exists. I got the feeling that, saying a reductionist has to believe that only the reduct exists, was kind of like an argument between a Mark Twain realist versus a reductionist. Either you think Mark Twain was real and distinct from Samuel Clemens, or you think Mark Twain reduces to Sam Clemens and therefore Twain doesn’t exist. But no … I think both existed and were equal to each other. I’m a reductionist who believes in the reality of the fundamental thing, which is in some sense the fuller, more complete description of the familiar object, but believes that this is coincident with the reality of the familiar object.
But given that some smart people seem not to think this position is sensible, I’m open to the possibility that I’ve lost my damn senses.
thedawdler · January 28, 2019 at 2:44 pm
I like the Mark Twain-Samuel Clemens analogy. I think Harland is talking about extreme reductionism. Richard Dawkins is a reductionist, but I don’t know if he would be best characterized as an extreme reductionist.
-Ryan