“How and why the current reigning philosophical hegemon (reductionistic materialism) is obviously correct [...], while the reigning philosophical viewpoints of all past societies and civilizations are obviously suspect—”
Reductionism is non-obviously correct-ish.
Science was non-reductionist till about 100 years ago.
One of the clinching arguments for reductionism.was the Schrödinger equation, which showed that in principle, the whole of chemistry is reducible to physics, while the rise of molecular biology shows the reduciblity of biology to chemistry. Before that, educators would point to the de facto hierarchy of the sciences—physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology—as evidence of a multi-layer reality.
The earlier belief in multi layered reality wasn’t silly: it was reasonable given the explanation actions available at the time. It was sensible if wrong (ish).
Another thing this tells you is that reductionism is not necessarily true , and not apriori true. (And we still dont have reductionist explanations of everything. Global reductionism is falsifiable, and persistent failure to find a reductive.explanation of some phenomenon is the falsification).
It’s not a claim that can made by armchair philosophy … the “mind projection argument” is wrong.
EY: “This, as I see it, is the thesis of reductionism. Reductionism is not a positive belief, but rather, a disbelief that the higher levels of simplified multilevel models are out there in the territory. ”
The higher levels could have been, though. The fact that we have high-level abstractions in our heads does not by itself mean that there is nothing corresponding to them in the territory. In fact, we can’t fit quark-level maps into our heads, so all our concepts are “higher level”. The argument proves too much: we do want to disbelieve in horse feathers,while we don’t want to start disbelieving in airplane wings, even if “airplane wing” is “just” a high level concept.
Similar considerations apply to materialism. Materialism in the sense that everything is made of a single substance is very non-obvious when you can’t turn wood into metal, or whatever. And soul theory is a parsimonious explanation for a range of phenomena, as Steven Pinker points out somewhere.
As it happens, the main stumbling blocks to the complete success of materialism and reductionism are the same thing—consciousness.
Reductionism is non-obviously correct-ish.
Science was non-reductionist till about 100 years ago.
One of the clinching arguments for reductionism.was the Schrödinger equation, which showed that in principle, the whole of chemistry is reducible to physics, while the rise of molecular biology shows the reduciblity of biology to chemistry. Before that, educators would point to the de facto hierarchy of the sciences—physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology—as evidence of a multi-layer reality.
The earlier belief in multi layered reality wasn’t silly: it was reasonable given the explanation actions available at the time. It was sensible if wrong (ish).
Another thing this tells you is that reductionism is not necessarily true , and not apriori true. (And we still dont have reductionist explanations of everything. Global reductionism is falsifiable, and persistent failure to find a reductive.explanation of some phenomenon is the falsification).
It’s not a claim that can made by armchair philosophy … the “mind projection argument” is wrong.
EY: “This, as I see it, is the thesis of reductionism. Reductionism is not a positive belief, but rather, a disbelief that the higher levels of simplified multilevel models are out there in the territory. ”
The higher levels could have been, though. The fact that we have high-level abstractions in our heads does not by itself mean that there is nothing corresponding to them in the territory. In fact, we can’t fit quark-level maps into our heads, so all our concepts are “higher level”. The argument proves too much: we do want to disbelieve in horse feathers,while we don’t want to start disbelieving in airplane wings, even if “airplane wing” is “just” a high level concept.
Similar considerations apply to materialism. Materialism in the sense that everything is made of a single substance is very non-obvious when you can’t turn wood into metal, or whatever. And soul theory is a parsimonious explanation for a range of phenomena, as Steven Pinker points out somewhere.
As it happens, the main stumbling blocks to the complete success of materialism and reductionism are the same thing—consciousness.