This brings us to the second flaw in their reasoning reasoning, that of trying to explain choice with a choice-thing. You can’t explain why a wall is red by saying “because it’s made of tiny red atoms;” this is not an explanation of red-ness. In order to explain red-ness, you must explain it in terms of non-red things. And yet, humans have a bad habit of explaining confusing things in terms of themselves. Why does living flesh respond to mental commands, while dead flesh doesn’t? Why, because the living flesh contains Élan Vital. Our naïve philosophers have made the same mistake: they said, “How can it possibly choose outcomes in which the inventory has more stamps? Aha! It must be by choosing outcomes in which the stamp counter is higher!,” and in doing so, they have explained choice in terms of choice, rather than in terms of something more basic.
Tautologies have value though. Math is an easy example, but I think even Elan Vital is defensible. Flesh that’s dead and flesh that’s alive look very much alike for the first few minutes after death. So “obviously” something about the flesh must have changed, but it’s really hard to know what that something actually is, so the concept of Elan Vital makes sense. The concept does have some marginal amount of predictive power—it tells us that it is the flesh which has gone through a change rather than something else. An example of a case where this wouldn’t be so would be if we were talking about shadows—an object might change color due to the environment around it changing, like when the sun sets.
Really, it’s treating Elan Vital as a sufficient answer that precludes the need for any other answers which is the mistake.
I see your overall point and agree with it as applied to this issue, but I kind of think that it is true you can always explain X in terms of something else ~X if you know enough about it. Matter can be explained in terms of mass, for example. Your point is true in that you can’t particularly far without reaching a point of self reference, if you moved on to asking detailed questions about what mass is and what energy is and so on I expect you’d hit some limits, but being able to take at least one step away from “the thing in itself” is crucial if you want to talk about something actually relevant to this interconnected universe we live in.
The key term here is reductively explain. If you have to switch to some other mode of explanation when reduction bottoms out, then reductive explanation has inherent limits that aren’t brought out in the chearleeding rhetoric. On the other hand, all is not lost.
The key term here is reductively explain. If you have to switch to some other mode of explanation when reduction bottoms out, then reductive explanation has inherent limits that aren’t brought out in the chearleeding rhetoric. On the other hand, all is not lost.
Warning: Nitpick ahead.
Tautologies have value though. Math is an easy example, but I think even Elan Vital is defensible. Flesh that’s dead and flesh that’s alive look very much alike for the first few minutes after death. So “obviously” something about the flesh must have changed, but it’s really hard to know what that something actually is, so the concept of Elan Vital makes sense. The concept does have some marginal amount of predictive power—it tells us that it is the flesh which has gone through a change rather than something else. An example of a case where this wouldn’t be so would be if we were talking about shadows—an object might change color due to the environment around it changing, like when the sun sets.
Really, it’s treating Elan Vital as a sufficient answer that precludes the need for any other answers which is the mistake.
It’s worse than that. Only naive reductionism expercs that you can always explain am X in terms of something else. What is matter made of?
I see your overall point and agree with it as applied to this issue, but I kind of think that it is true you can always explain X in terms of something else ~X if you know enough about it. Matter can be explained in terms of mass, for example. Your point is true in that you can’t particularly far without reaching a point of self reference, if you moved on to asking detailed questions about what mass is and what energy is and so on I expect you’d hit some limits, but being able to take at least one step away from “the thing in itself” is crucial if you want to talk about something actually relevant to this interconnected universe we live in.
The key term here is reductively explain. If you have to switch to some other mode of explanation when reduction bottoms out, then reductive explanation has inherent limits that aren’t brought out in the chearleeding rhetoric. On the other hand, all is not lost.
The key term here is reductively explain. If you have to switch to some other mode of explanation when reduction bottoms out, then reductive explanation has inherent limits that aren’t brought out in the chearleeding rhetoric. On the other hand, all is not lost.