Volume 39, Issue 2, 2012/2013
Gergely Kertész
Pages 16-21
On Margitay’s Notion of Reduction by Definition
In a recent article “From Epistemology to Ontology,” Tihamer Margitay argues, in addition to other things, that the ontological arguments Polanyi provided for his ontological realism with respect to the levels of reality are insufficient. Although Margitay shows this correctly in the case of arguments from boundary conditions, his arguments are not that convincing against the unidentifyability thesis, the thesis that entity kinds on higher levels cannot be identified with descriptions given on lower levels. I argue that here Polányi relies on a version of the multiple realizeability thesis and this argument can be reformulated in a stronger version against which the counterargument Margitay provides is insufficient.