It sounds like, on reflection, your previous post was less about reduction, and more about misapplying the idea of reduction in a way that ignores or elides map-territory distinctions, instead pretending our best known current map is actually reality. Would you agree with that?
One can look at it that way. However, there was also an idea to highlight the relational nature of rationality and reduction in the overall scheme of things and to stress out the principle of computational irreducibility. That is to show their inbuilt limitations. Where they stop to work even at the level of a map.
I’ve just learned a concept of supervenience from a philosopher and it seems to explain the idea that I was after. For example, a financial transaction is (most likely) computationally irreducible (think of all possible avenues it could happen and what will be involved—trust, work, society, concept of money, agreements, credit cards, cheques, etc.), so no practical reduction to elementary particles is possible (as that would require a CPU powerful enough to emulate the universe). However, elementary particles are undoubtedly underlying all that. So one can say both statements: a) that a financial transaction is irreducible to elementary particles; b) that a financial transaction supervenes on elementary particles. I think that’s a helpful concept and clears up what I was trying to highlight.
It sounds like, on reflection, your previous post was less about reduction, and more about misapplying the idea of reduction in a way that ignores or elides map-territory distinctions, instead pretending our best known current map is actually reality. Would you agree with that?
One can look at it that way. However, there was also an idea to highlight the relational nature of rationality and reduction in the overall scheme of things and to stress out the principle of computational irreducibility. That is to show their inbuilt limitations. Where they stop to work even at the level of a map.
I’ve just learned a concept of supervenience from a philosopher and it seems to explain the idea that I was after. For example, a financial transaction is (most likely) computationally irreducible (think of all possible avenues it could happen and what will be involved—trust, work, society, concept of money, agreements, credit cards, cheques, etc.), so no practical reduction to elementary particles is possible (as that would require a CPU powerful enough to emulate the universe). However, elementary particles are undoubtedly underlying all that. So one can say both statements: a) that a financial transaction is irreducible to elementary particles; b) that a financial transaction supervenes on elementary particles. I think that’s a helpful concept and clears up what I was trying to highlight.