In previous work, I defend the following disparity between moral and epistemic facts: whereas moral facts are irreducibly normative, epistemic facts – facts such as that some subject is epistemically justified in believing something – are reducible to facts from some other domain (such as facts about probabilities). This moral-epistemic disparity is significant because it undercuts an important kind of argument for robust moral realism. My defense of epistemic reductionism and of the moral-epistemic disparity has been criticized by Richard (...) Rowland (2013) and by Terence Cuneo and Christos Kyriacou (forthcoming). This paper aims to rebut these criticisms and, more generally, to clarify and strengthen the case for epistemic reductionism and the moral-epistemic disparity. (shrink)

Reductionism encompasses a set of ontological, epistemological, and methodological claims about the relation of different scientific domains. The basic question of reduction is whether the properties, concepts, explanations, or methods from one scientific domain (typically at higher levels of organization) can be deduced from or explained by the properties, concepts, explanations, or methods from another domain of science (typically one about lower levels of organization). Reduction is germane to a variety of issues in philosophy of science, including the structure (...) of scientific theories, the relations between different scientific disciplines, the nature of explanation, the diversity of methodology, and the very idea of theoretical progress, as well as to numerous topics in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, such as emergence, mereology, and supervenience. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Reduction as Relation between Theories: Historical Considerations Antireductionism about Intertheoretical Relations Reductionism as a Thesis about Explanations in Biology Reductionism and Explanation in Evolutionary Biology References Further Reading.

I defend the view that moral properties are identical to properties that can be expressed without using moral vocabulary.

In this paper, I clarify and defend a provocative hypothesis offered by Bernard Williams, namely, that modern people are much more likely to speak in terms of master-concepts like “good” or “right,” and correspondingly less likely to think and speak in the pluralistic terms favored by certain Ancient societies. By conducting a close reading of the Platonic dialogues Charmides and Laches, I show that the figure of Socrates plays a key historical role in this conceptual shift. Once we understand that (...) our narrow, reductionist focus on “thin” ethical concepts is a contingent historical development, we are, I claim, in a much better position to evaluate it. (shrink)

Contrary to a widespread belief, this book establishes that ontological and epistemological reductionism stand or fall together.

The special and unique attitudes that we take towards events in our futures/pasts—e.g., attitudes like the dread of an impeding pain—create a challenge for “Reductionist” accounts that reduce persons to aggregates of interconnected person stages: if the person stage currently dreading tomorrow’s pain is numerically distinct from the person stage that will actually suffer the pain, what reason could the current person stage have for thinking of that future pain as being his? One reason everyday subjects believe they have a (...) substantially extended temporal existence stems from introspection—they introspectively experience their selves as being temporally extended. In this paper, I examine whether a Reductionist about personal identity can co-opt this explanation. Using Galen Strawson’s recent work on self-experience as a resource, I reach both a negative and a positive conclusion about the prospects of such a position. First, the relevant kind of self-experience—i.e., the introspective experience of one’s self as being a substantially temporally extended entity—will not automatically arise within a person stage simply in virtue of that stage being psychologically connected to/continuous with other person stages. Second, the relevant kind of self-experience will arise, however, in virtue of person stages weaving together their respective experiences, actions, etc. via a narrative. This positive conclusion points towards a new Reductionist position that focuses upon a narrative, and not mere psychological continuity, in attempting to justify the special attitudes we take towards events in our futures/pasts. (shrink)

In the last decades it has become clear that medicine must find some way to combine its scientific and humanistic sides. In other words, an adequate notion of medicine requires an integrative position that mediates between the analytic-reductionist and the normative-holistic tendencies we find therein. This is especially important as these different styles of reasoning separate “illness” (something perceived and managed by the whole individual in concert with their environment) and “disease” (a “mechanical failure” of a biological element within the (...) body). While the demand for an integrative view has typically been motivated by ethical concerns, we claim that it is also motivated, perhaps even more fundamentally, by epistemological and methodological reasons. Evidence-based bio-medicine employs experimental and statistical techniques which eliminate important differences in the ways that conscious humans evaluate, live with, and react to disease and illness. However, it is precisely these experiences that underpin the concepts and norms of bio-medicine. Humanistic disciplines, on the other hand, have the resources to investigate these experiences in an intersubjectively testable way. Medicine, therefore, cannot afford to ignore its nature as a human science; it must be concerned not only with disease and illness, but also with the ways in which patients as persons respond to malady. Insofar as attitudes and expectations influence the criteria of illness and disease, they must be studied as part of the genuine subject matter of medicine as a human science. In general, we urge that this is a necessary step to overcome today's trend to split evidence-based and clinical medicine. (shrink)

Reductionism is a metaphysical thesis, a claim about explanations, and a research program. The metaphysical thesis reductionists advance (and antireductionists accept) is that all facts, including all biological facts, are fixed by the physical and chemical facts; there are no non-physical events, states, or processes, and so biological events, states and processes are “nothing but” physical ones. The research program can be framed as a methodological prescription which follows from the claim about explanations. Antireductionism does not dispute reductionism’s (...) metaphysical claim, but rejects the explanatory claim and so the methodological moral. To a first approximation what reductionists and antireductionists disagree about is whether explanations in functional biology can be or need to be explained by or completed or perhaps replaced by explanations in terms of molecular biology.i And this disagreement over the adequacy of explanations in functional biology drives a significant methodological disagreement with consequence for the research program of biology. (shrink)

Macroeconomists overwhelmingly believe that macroeconomics requires microfoundations, typically understood as a strong eliminativist reductionism. Microfoundations aims to recover intentionality. In the face of technical and data constraints macroeconomists typically employ a representative-agent model, in which a single agent solves the microeconomic optimization problem for the whole economy, and take it to be microfoundationally adequate. The characteristic argument for the representative-agent model holds that the possibility of the sequential elaboration of the model to cover any number of individual agents justifies (...) treating the policy conclusions of the single-agent model as practically relevant. This eschatological justification is examined and rejected. (shrink)

(1) The aim of the paper is to develop a reduction of fallacy theory, i.e. to 'deduce' fallacy theory from a positive theory of argumentation which provides exact criteria for valid and adequate argumentation. Such reductionism has several advantages compared to an unsystematic action, which is quite usual in current fallacy but which at least in part is due to the poor state of positive argumentation theory itself. (2) After defining 'fallacy' (3) some principle ideas and (4) the exact (...) criteria for (argumentatively) valid and adequate arguments of the 'practical theory of argumentation' of the author are expounded. These criteria will be used as the positive basis for the following reduction. (5) In the main part of the paper a systematization, definition and explanation of the main types and many subforms of fallacies of argumentative validity and (6) adequacy is developed, following the list of positive conditions of validity and adequacy. In addition to many new types of fallacies, this systematization contains the most important of the traditionally known and named fallacies; these are explained and the criteria for some of them are corrected or put more precisely. (shrink)

An encyclopedia entry on the issue of whether morality is reducible -- that is, whether moral facts are identical to facts that can be expressed in non-moral terms.

Reductionism concerns a set of ontological and epistemological claims, and methodological strictures based on them, about the relationship between two different scientific domains. The critical assumption is that one of these domains is privileged over the other in the sense that the concepts, rules, laws, and other elements of the privileged domain can be used to specify, constitute, or account for those of the other “reduced” domain. This specification often consists of explanation, such that the “reducing” domain is epistemically (...) privileged over the reduced one. Explanations of this type are “reductionist” (or, are “reductions”) and reductionism is then the thesis that such explanations will always be forthcoming or at least are possible in principle. Reductionism is most plausible if the entities of the reduced domain can be interpreted as arising from (e.g., as aggregates of) entities of the reduced domain. This ontological claim is controversial but motivates many reductionist theses and associated scientific research programs. Thus, epistemological and ontological claims about reductionism have the methodological implication that they should govern and guide scientific research. When such research proves to be fruitless over a period of time, the associated reductionist claims themselves become suspect. Although issues connected with reductionism arise in the physical and social sciences, most attention to reductionism in philosophy of science over the last few decades has focused on the biological sciences, especially after the advent of molecular biology made it plausible to believe that biological phenomena can be uniformly explained (in detail) from their physical basis. However, the program of finding such explanations has a long philosophical history often couched in terms of seeking “mechanical,” “mechanistic,” or “materialistic” explanations. The contrast here is with traditional vitalism and various forms of teleology and holism. (shrink)

Attempts to explain Peirce’s various classifications of signs have been a preoccupation of many Peirce scholars. Opinions are mixed about the sense, coherence, and fruitfulness of Peirce’s various versions, particularly the latter ones. I argue here that it is not a fruitful enterprise, even if sense could be made of them. Although Peirce makes his motivations for the classification of the sciences fairly explicit, it’s hard to find Peirce’s reasons for sign classification. More importantly, I try to make the case (...) that such classifications are premised on a reductionist framework of semiosis that is contrary to the irreducible triadic character of signs that Peirce otherwise espouses. The reductionism is the result of Peirce’s use of certain models for his sign classifications, in particular, Mendeleev’s periodic table. I suggest that the remedy for the reductionism is to re-emphasize the processual and functional view of semiosis, rather than to focus on particular classes of signs. Corresponding to the three triadic conditions of semiosis, I argue that signs function to inform, represent or refer, and interpret, and that understanding these three function and how they interrelate may prove to be a more fruitful approach to sign analysis than sign classification. (shrink)

We address the commentaries on our target article in terms of four major themes. First, we note that virtually all commentators agree that mental disorders are not brain disorders in the common interpretation of these terms, and establish the consensus that explanatory reductionism is not a viable thesis. Second, we address criticisms to the effect that our article was misdirected or aimed at a straw man; we argue that this is unlikely, given the widespread communication of reductionist slogans in (...) psychopathology research and society. Third, we tackle the question of whether intentionality, extended systems, and multiple realizability are as problematic as claimed in the target article, and we present a number of nuances and extensions with respect to our article. Fourth, we discuss the question of how the network approach should incorporate biological factors, given that wholesale reductionism is an unlikely option. (shrink)

In the contemporary life sciences more and more researchers emphasize the “limits of reductionism” (e.g. Ahn et al. 2006a, 709; Mazzocchi 2008, 10) or they call for a move “beyond reductionism” (Gallagher/Appenzeller 1999, 79). However, it is far from clear what exactly they argue for and what the envisioned limits of reductionism are. In this paper I claim that the current discussions about reductionism in the life sciences, which focus on methodological and explanatory issues, leave the (...) concepts of a reductive method and a reductive explanation too unspecified. In order to fill this gap and to clarify what the limits of reductionism are I identify three reductive methods that are crucial in the current practice of the life sciences: decomposition, focusing on internal factors, and studying parts in isolation. Furthermore, I argue that reductive explanations in the life sciences exhibit three characteristics: first, they refer only to factors at a lower level than the phenomenon at issue, second, they focus on internal factors and thus ignore or simplify the environment of a system, and, third, they cite only the parts of a system in isolation. (shrink)

Ross's Kritik der sogenannten praktischen Erkenntnis pertains more to moral philosophy than to the philosophy of law, even if its contents are important for the latter, too. Its main objective is to show the theoretical groundlessness of any evaluative judgment. This happens when Ross takes the behaviourist approach of reducing psychology to physiology, which opens up fruitful comparisons with Marxist materialism, and in particular with that of Georges Politzer. Another fundamental question concerns the assumption that theoretical nihilism would lead to (...) practical nihilism, as argued by Theodor Geiger (but denied by Ross). And yet, if Geiger is right, can this have no effect on people's everyday lives? (shrink)

A contemporary analytic philosophy approach to science is discussed. It is pointed out that enthusiasm for language studies in philosophy has been recently grossly exaggerated. A role of experimental science as a source of "profound" questions about the essence of the world should be more appreciated. It is shown that the so-called common intuitions fail to capture the gist of current problems in science and can no longer lead us to faithful solutions. For instance, it is not easy to reconcile (...) with common intuitions a vision of the world as a set of latent potential possibilities which show up themselves only under certain conditions. Therefore, dynamic description of the world is proposed to treat both phenomena and various processes among them. In order to achieve this we ought to focus on fates of allegedly fundamental theories and on a strategy of making science. The latter is thoroughly discussed in this article. Furthermore, three types of reductionism are scrutinized and it leads us to the conclusion that our understanding of the world is more likely based on our ability to explain diversified phenomena than on our capacity to reduce them to the ostensibly fundamental models or theories. (shrink)

The scholarly enterprise known as the psychology of religion can be understood as the psychological study of religious practice, belief, and experience. With one foot in the stream of psychological theory and research and the other in the flow of religious experience and understanding, it seeks to illuminate the latter through use of the former. In other words, religion becomes the object of psychological analysis, that is, in some sense subordinated to psychology. This relative inequality raises significant methodological issues for (...) anyone attempting to study religion in this way. In particular, one is confronted with the prospect of becoming reductionistic, that is, of explaining what is in fact a complex phenomenon in terms too simple and uni-dimensional, distorting the object of study in the process. (shrink)

Francis Crick once remarked, "...the ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry" [1966:10]. Arguments to the contrary have been marshalled by many biologists and philosophers, notably Mayr [1986, 1988], and Rosenberg [1985]. Such arguments notwithstanding, reductionist hopes are still alive and well in both biological and philosophical circles. It seems reasonable to suppose that a first step in a reductionist programme would be the reduction or elimination (...) of non-biochemical, biological properties to biochemical properties. (shrink)

Feigl approaches philosophy of mind in the monist perspective of Logical Empiricism but he does not treat the mind-body problem in an eliminative manner. Although he modified his positions and wavered between strict reductionism and explicit non-reductionism, he never abandoned his conviction that the mind-body problem is not a pseudoproblem. Especially in his 'double-knowledge-view' he concedes private mental states that physical theory cannot account for and develops an identity theory that integrates two epistemic features - the way of (...) immediate experience and the indirect way of knowledge-by-description. Feigl's complex treatment of the mind-body problem retains its systematical importance even in the light of later developments in philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Feigl approaches philosophy of mind in the monist perspective of Logical Empiricism but he does not treat the mind-body problem in an eliminative manner. Although he modified his positions and wavered between strict reductionism and explicit non-reductionism, he never abandoned his conviction that the mind-body problem is not a pseudoproblem. Especially in his 'double-knowledge-view' he concedes private mental states that physical theory cannot account for and develops an identity theory that integrates two epistemic features - the way of (...) immediate experience and the indirect way of knowledge-by-description. Feigl's complex treatment of the mind-body problem retains its systematical importance even in the light of later developments in philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Against the background of the Deweyan tradition of Democracy and Education, we discuss problems of complexity and reductionism in education and educational philosophy. First, we investigate some of Dewey’s own criticisms of reductionist tendencies in the educational traditions, theories, and practices of his time. Secondly, we explore some important cases of reductionism in the educational debates of our own day and argue that a similar criticism in behalf of democracy and education is appropriate and can easily be based (...) on Deweyan terms. Thirdly, we draw some more general conclusions about complexity and reductionism as challenges for democracy and education. Among other things, we argue that powerful social tendencies of capitalist competition and social Darwinism support reductionisms in education and put the democratic project at risk. The tensional relation between democracy and capitalism constitutes a major challenge for educational philosophy in our own time as much as in Dewey’s. (shrink)

Almost everyone agrees that many testimonial beliefs constitute knowledge. According to non-reductionists, some testimonial beliefs possess positive epistemic status independent of that conferred by perception, memory, and induction. Recently, Jennifer Lackey has provided a counterexample to a popular version of this view. Here I argue that her counterexample fails.

Functional reductionism concerning mental properties has recently been advocated by Jaegwon Kim in order to solve the problem of the 'causal exclusion' of the mental. Adopting a reductionist strategy first proposed by David Lewis, he regards psychological properties as being 'higher-order' properties functionally defined over 'lower-order' properties, which are causally efficacious. Though functional reductionism is compatible with the multiple realizability of psychological properties, it is blocked if psychological properties are subdivided or crosscut by neurophysiological properties. I argue that (...) there is recent evidence from cognitive neuroscience that shows that this is the case for the psychological property of fear. Though this may suggest that some psychological properties should be revised in order to conform to those of neurophysiology, the history of science demonstrates that this is not always the outcome, particularly with properties that play an important role in our folk theories and are central to human concerns. (shrink)

The neuroscience revolution has revived interpretations of religious experiences as wholly dependent on biological conditions. William James cautioned against allowing such neurological reductionism to overwhelm other useful perspectives. Contemporary psychologists of religion have raised similar cautions, but have failed to engage James as a full conversation partner. In this article, we present a contemporary, applied version of James's perspective. We clarify the problem by reviewing specific James-like contemporary concerns about reductionism in the neuropsychological study of religion. Then, most (...) centrally, we employ three of James's conceptual tools—pragmatism, pluralism, and radical empiricism—to moderate contemporary reductionism. Finally, we point to a constructive approach through which neuroscientists might collaborate with scholars in the humanities and psychosocial sciences, which is consistent with our conclusion that it is often no longer fruitful to separate neurobiological studies from studies that are psychosocial or sociocultural. (shrink)

One of the central points of contention in the epistemology of testimony concerns the uniqueness (or not) of the justification of beliefs formed through testimony--whether such justification can be accounted for in terms of, or 'reduced to,' other familiar sort of justification, e.g. without relying on any epistemic principles unique to testimony. One influential argument for the reductionist position, found in the work of Elizabeth Fricker, argues by appeal to the need for the hearer to monitor the testimony for credibility. (...) Fricker (1994) argues, first, that some monitoring for trustworthiness is required if the hearer is to avoid being gullible, and second, that reductionism but not anti-reductionism is compatible with ascribing an important role to the process of monitoring in the course of justifiably accepting observed testimony. In this paper we argue that such an argument fails. (shrink)

Biology above the level of the individual organism ? population ecology and genetics, community ecology, biogeography and evolution ? requires the study of intrinsically complex systems. But the dominant philosophies of western science have proven to be inadequate for the study of complexity:(1)The reductionist myth of simplicity leads its advocates to isolate parts as completely as possible and study these parts. It underestimates the importance of interactions in theory, and its recommendations for practice (in agricultural programs or conservation and environmental (...) protection) are typically thwarted by the power of indirect and unanticipated causes rather than by error in the detailed description of their own objects of study.(2)Reductionism ignores properties of complex wholes; the effects of these properties are therefore seen only as noise; this randomness is elevated into an ontological principle which leads to the blocking of investigation and the reification of statistics, so that data reduction and statistical prediction often pass for explanation.(3)The faith in the atomistic nature of the world makes the allocation of relative weights to separate causes the main object of science, and makes it more difficult to study the nature of interconnectedness. (shrink)

I have not attempted to provide here an analysis of the methodology of molecular biology or molecular genetics which would demonstrate at what specific points a more reductionist aim would make sense as a research strategy. This, I believe, would require a much deeper analysis of scientific growth than philosophy of science has been able to provide thus far. What I have tried to show is that a straightforward reductionist strategy cannot be said to be follwed in important cases of (...) theory development in molecular biology, and that in at least one important case, the Jacob-Monod operon theory, the methodology followed was more biological than chemical. It should be noted in closing, however, that since biological systems are thought by molecular biologists to be nothing but chemical systems, in the long run detailed investigations of such systems will be in full accord with the dictates suggested by the general reduction model. (shrink)

Two key intuitions regarding knowledge are explored: that knowledge is a kind of cognitive achievement and that knowledge excludes luck. It is claimed that a proper understanding of how these intuitions should inform our conception of knowledge leads to some surprising results, not just as regards the theory of knowledge more generally but also as regards the epistemology of testimonial knowledge. In particular, it is argued that this conception of knowledge motivates a new kind of proposal B quasi-reductionism B (...) that can accommodate the motivations behind both reductionist and anti-reductionist accounts of the epistemology of testimonial knowledge. (shrink)

In recent cancer research, strong and apparently conflicting epistemological stances have been advocated by different research teams in a mist of an ever-growing body of knowledge ignited by ever-more perplexing and non-conclusive experimental facts: in the past few years, an 'organicist' approach investigating cancer development at the tissue level has challenged the established and so-called 'reductionist' approach focusing on disentangling the genetic and molecular circuitry of carcinogenesis. This article reviews the ways in which 'organicism' and 'reductionism' are used and (...) opposed in this context, with an aim at clarifying the debate. Methodological, epistemological and ontological implications of both approaches are discussed. We argue that the 'organicist/reductionist' opposition in the present case of carcinogenesis is more a matter of diverging heuristics than a claim about theoretical or ontological (ir)reducibility. As a matter of fact, except for the downward causation claim, which we question, we argue that the organicist arguments are compatible with the reductionist approach. Moreover, we speculate that both approaches, which currently focus on specific entities i.e., genes versus tissues, will need to shift their conceptual frameworks to studying complex arrays of relationships potentially ranging over several levels of entities, as is the case with 'systems biology'. (shrink)

1) reductionism in psychology is not a single move regarding a single conceptual issue, but is rather a complex of concerns with a network of conceptually interrelated issues. 2) reductionistic moves tend to explicitly rely upon or implicitly presuppose the use of dispositional terms. 3) dispositional terms will not serve to effect reductionistic programs because they themselves require many of the features that those programs require excising. 4) if dispositionals are not themselves logically tied to intentionals, they at least (...) bear a sufficient family resemblance to participate in logical problems similar to those of intentionals and modals. 5) if dispositionals and intentionals do not require the teleological frame from which they historically arose, then they at least require some alternative accounting, not an elimination. (shrink)

This article argues that it is possible to bring the social sciences into evolutionary focus without being committed to a thesis the author calls ontological reductionism, which is a widespread predilection for lower-level explanations. After showing why we should reject ontological reductionism, the author argues that there is a way to construe cultural evolution that does justice to the autonomy of social science explanations. This paves the way for a liberal approach to explanation the author calls explanatory pluralism, (...) which allows for the possibility of explaining cultural phenomena in terms of different evolutionary processes. (shrink)

Functional reductionism characterises inter-theoretic reduction as the recovery of the upper-level behaviour described by the reduced theory in terms of the lower-level reducing theory. For instance, finding a statistical mechanical realiser that plays the functional role of thermodynamic entropy allows for establishing a reductive link between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. This view constitutes a unique approach to reduction that enjoys a number of positive features, but has received limited attention in the philosophy of science. -/- This paper aims to (...) clarify the meaning of functional reductionism in science, with a focus on physics, to define both its place with respect to other approaches to reduction and its connection to ontology. To do so, we develop and explore two alternative frameworks for functional reduction, called Syntactic Functional Reductionism and Semantic Functional Reductionism. They represent two different possible stances on the view that expand and improve the basic functional reductionist approach along different lines, and make clear how the approach works in practice. The former elaborates on David Lewis’ account, is connected with the syntactic view of theories, is committed to a logical characterisation of functional roles, and is embedded within Nagelian reductionism. The latter adopts a semantic view of theories, spells out functional roles mainly in terms of mathematical roles within the models of theories, and is expressed in terms of the related structuralist approach to reduction. The development of these frameworks has the final goal of advancing functional reductionism, to make it a fully-fledged alternative account for reduction in science. (shrink)