Abstract
According to Wimsatt, a proper treatment of reduction must distinguish between two types of reductionist activities scientists engage in. One of the benefits of better understanding the nature of reduction, he believes, is that it shows that eliminativism, that is, the elimination of concepts and theories from science, is a rather circumscribed and limited affair, especially in the case of inter-level reductionist activities. While I agree with Wimsatt that it is important to distinguish the two types of reductionisms, I show that elimination in inter-level reductionist activities can be a powerful heuristic in science, driving both inter-level and successional reduction.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bickle J. (1998). Psychoneural reduction: the new wave. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass
Bickle J. (2003). Philosophy and neuroscience: a ruthlessly reductive account. Kluwer, Dordrecht
Churchland P.S. (1986). Neurophilosophy. MIT press, Cambridge, Mass
Churchland P.M. (1981). Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes. The Journal of Philosophy 78, 67–90
Nickles T. (1973). Two Concepts of inter-theoretic reduction. The Journal of Philosophy 70, 181–201
Rorty R. (1965). Mind-body identity, privacy and categories. The Review of Metaphysics 19, 24–54
Wimsatt W. C. (2006). Reductionism and its heuristics: making methodological reductionism honest. Synthese, this volume.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Poirier, P. Finding a place for elimination in inter-level reductionist activities: Reply to Wimsatt. Synthese 151, 477–483 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-006-9018-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-006-9018-z