The Fallacy of Reductionism

Great Debates
1

Within a wide-ranging discussion on another board, I had the following (paraphrased) exchange:X: Are you saying we are ‘nothing but’ a biochemistry?

PC: Loosely, yes.

X: Well, we could say we’re nothing but atomic particles. That just commits the fallacy of reductionism though.

PC: What do you mean by that?

X: The fallacy of reductionism is just that, ‘nothing but.’ It is the reduction of form to matter. The predicate is only the matter or raw material that the subject is made of, not its form or essence or nature.

PC: I’m still not seeing a fallacy. It sounds like we just disagree on the validity of metaphysics…and we moved on to other subjects. Now I agree that reductions can be overreaching or downright erroneous. But labelling a reduction as fallacious without providing a valid specific critique is just hand-waving.

From googling it, “fallacy of reductionism” appears mostly as a club wielded in the culture war on science by some spiritual types. Is there more to it or is it itself a fallacious attempt to shutdown a line of argument? I vote for the latter.

PC

2

It means that you are reducing things to a completely unnuanced position.

‘We are nothing but atoms’

Now, those atoms make molecules, which then interact to make amino acids, on to proteins etc… Those Proteins interact with lipids and so on. The result of these interactions is that some form solid tissue like blood vessels or neurons. Those blood vessels and neurons coalesce in larger organs like the heart or the brain/spine.

You can just as easily say, ‘We are just flesh’ or ‘We are just our ideas’, because you can also define a person by what they believe. You cannot describe the entire human experience based purely on the constituent atoms, because that tells you absolutely nothing about whether say, a person loves or hates their Mother.

If you could reduce it the way you are attempting to reduce it then you could describe every aspect of existence using biochemistry, but you can’t.

3

Best as I can gather, one has committed the ‘fallacy of reductionism’ if one reduces a given system in such a manner that emergent phenomena no longer show; for instance, ‘life’ cannot be explained on a molecular level - we’re not much different from rocks in that way - but is a property of the ‘living system’ as a whole, or rather of the interactions within the system.
This doesn’t open up the gates for any kind of metaphysical explanation, however; in fact I’d say that the argument is fallaciously applied in your example, since there is no reasoning about the properties that are supposedly ‘lost in reduction’.

4

I got nuthin’ out of the logical manual of arms for this situation, but PC’s example seems to hint at the simplest explanation not always being the best. Occam’s razor can still cut ya.

5

[QUOTE=Half Man Half Wit]
Best as I can gather, one has committed the ‘fallacy of reductionism’ if one reduces a given system in such a manner that emergent phenomena no longer show; for instance, ‘life’ cannot be explained on a molecular level - we’re not much different from rocks in that way - but is a property of the ‘living system’ as a whole, or rather of the interactions within the system.
This doesn’t open up the gates for any kind of metaphysical explanation, however; in fact I’d say that the argument is fallaciously applied in your example, since there is no reasoning about the properties that are supposedly ‘lost in reduction’.
[/QUOTE]
Yes. “The fallacy of reductionism” seems like a very broad brush. I may have committed a poor reduction but X didn’t demonstrate it. He can’t claim that all reductions are fallacious. What he was saying was there are metaphysical entities that cannot be fully mapped to physical entities. Whether he or I was right was the debate. “Fallacy of reductionism” was just his fiat that he was right.

6

[QUOTE=the PC apeman]
Yes. “The fallacy of reductionism” seems like a very broad brush. I may have committed a poor reduction but X didn’t demonstrate it. He can’t claim that all reductions are fallacious. What he was saying was there are metaphysical entities that cannot be fully mapped to physical entities. Whether he or I was right was the debate. “Fallacy of reductionism” was just his fiat that he was right.
[/QUOTE]

We didn’t participate in your discussion with X, but I personally am of the opinion that all metaphysical entities can be mapped to physical entities, with one exception. Not all metaphysical entities can be mapped to physical entities at the level of understanding of the cartographer.

7

[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
I got nuthin’ out of the logical manual of arms for this situation, but PC’s example seems to hint at the simplest explanation not always being the best. Occam’s razor can still cut ya.
[/QUOTE]
I agree. Reading an old thread on solipsism recently brought that home for me.

8

It seems that most charges of reductionism imply that there is actually something in the higher level system that can’t be explained by its components and the interaction of its components. Saying we’re atoms doesn’t mean that molecular bonds don’t exist. It does mean that there is no soul or other magical entity. I’m assuming X believes in a soul, which is why s/he is so disturbed about us being just biochemistry, right?

9

[QUOTE=the PC apeman]
From googling it, “fallacy of reductionism” appears mostly as a club wielded in the culture war on science by some spiritual types.
[/QUOTE]
Most of the time yes; sometimes it’s a valid complaint. I’ve heard the term “greedy reductionism” used as well ( by Daniel Denett IIRC ) to refer to a refusal to acknowledge anything but the lowest levels of whatever is being reduced. Examples would be someone that denies that there is really such a thing as consciouness just because it doesn’t exist in individual neurons, or uses the fact that we are masses of biochemicals as an excuse to not care about people’s feelings or welfare.

Most of the time it’s just someone trying to deny as aspect of science they don’t like, IMHO.

10

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Most of the time yes; sometimes it’s a valid complaint. I’ve heard the term “greedy reductionism” used as well ( by Daniel Denett IIRC ) to refer to a refusal to acknowledge anything but the lowest levels of whatever is being reduced. Examples would be someone that denies that there is really such a thing as consciouness just because it doesn’t exist in individual neurons, or uses the fact that we are masses of biochemicals as an excuse to not care about people’s feelings or welfare.

Most of the time it’s just someone trying to deny as aspect of science they don’t like, IMHO.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t even accept most complaints of greedy reductionism. Saying consciousness doesn’t exist because it’s not evident in individual neurons is elimitivism, not reductionism. What the reductionist says is, unless you wish to introduce supernatural entities, consciousness can be fully (in theory) explainable by such physical component entities as neurons.

Because folks get all ego locked over things like consciousness, consider a weblink (the example from Wikipedia’s article). The reductionist says it’s “nothing but” electrons but (and this is important) they are in a particular arrangement and context - just like a particular arrangement of bricks and lumber makes a house and another arrangement makes a different house and yet another makes sales display at Lowe’s.

11

[QUOTE=Voyager]
It seems that most charges of reductionism imply that there is actually something in the higher level system that can’t be explained by its components and the interaction of its components. Saying we’re atoms doesn’t mean that molecular bonds don’t exist. It does mean that there is no soul or other magical entity. I’m assuming X believes in a soul, which is why s/he is so disturbed about us being just biochemistry, right?
[/QUOTE]
X never appealed to anything supernatural but I suspect you are correct that was his unspoken position.

12

[QUOTE=the PC apeman]
I don’t even accept most complaints of greedy reductionism. Saying consciousness doesn’t exist because it’s not evident in individual neurons is elimitivism, not reductionism. What the reductionist says is, unless you wish to introduce supernatural entities, consciousness can be fully (in theory) explainable by such physical component entities as neurons.

[/QUOTE]
I don’t see any important difference between reductionism (as you’ve defined it) and eliminativism.

13

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
I don’t see any important difference between reductionism (as you’ve defined it) and eliminativism.
[/QUOTE]
Here’s how I see the difference. Der Trihs’ example was “consciousness doesn’t exist,” it’s just an arrangement of physical entities. That’s an eliminativist view. It holds that the label we’ve applied is inappropriate and misleading. As a reductionist, I say consciousness does exist, it’s just an arrangement of physical entities. It is the view that the label is appropriate and useful.

14

[QUOTE=the PC apeman]
Here’s how I see the difference. Der Trihs’ example was “consciousness doesn’t exist,” it’s just an arrangement of physical entities. That’s an eliminativist view. It holds that the label we’ve applied is inappropriate and misleading. As a reductionist, I say consciousness does exist, it’s just an arrangement of physical entities. It is the view that the label is appropriate and useful.
[/QUOTE]
:confused: I truly am sorry, but it seems to me that you and Der are merely nitpicking about labels. The difference between the two is so trivial that I have trouble understanding why anyone would even bother making the distinction.

15

[QUOTE=the PC apeman]
Here’s how I see the difference. Der Trihs’ example was “consciousness doesn’t exist,” it’s just an arrangement of physical entities. That’s an eliminativist view. It holds that the label we’ve applied is inappropriate and misleading. As a reductionist, I say consciousness does exist, it’s just an arrangement of physical entities. It is the view that the label is appropriate and useful.
[/QUOTE]
Or to put it another way, the reductionist analyzes the components of a larger whole in order to understand that whole; the greedy reductionist/eliminativist pretends that there isn’t any larger whole, and the person trying to undercut science accuses all reductionism of being greedy reductionism.

16

A few years back I took a non-credit open-to-the-public course at the University of Minnesota call “Physic for the Rest of Us” which was ostensibly to expain concepts of modern physics to a non-technical audience. It was led by Roger Jones (Amazon.com), a physics prof at the U, who did a good job explaining the physics, but included what I would call an anti-science agenda possibly motivated by a new age or postmodernist view (which he didn’t push explicitly). The big bogeyman in the course was “reductionism”.

Alas it was never clear what this meant or exactly why reductionism was bad. It had something to do with going too far in trying to understand things in terms of their component parts, but I don’t remember him presenting a single example where there was some practical problem that resulted from the practice of reductionism. No doubt it would be bad to try to solve a mystery by analyzing the neural connections in a suspects brain, but nobody actually tries to do that. My feeling was that reductionism was basically a straw man to be used when science had a result you didn’t like.

17

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
:confused: I truly am sorry, but it seems to me that you and Der are merely nitpicking about labels. The difference between the two is so trivial that I have trouble understanding why anyone would even bother making the distinction.
[/QUOTE]
Well I don’t think Der Trihs holds that view. It was just an example he gave. So I may be picking non-existent nits. But it’s worth knowing that labels are very powerful things that can obscure and deny their components.

It’s also worth noting that one can be eliminativist about some things and reductionist about others. Neither need be a complete world view.

18

[QUOTE=Voyager]
It seems that most charges of reductionism imply that there is actually something in the higher level system that can’t be explained by its components and the interaction of its components.
[/quote]

Explain loving your mother on a purely atomic level for me please.

It says nothing of the sort. You are just inferring your bias.

One need not be concerned about being biochemistry and fear a reduction of the soul at the same time. Being biochemical beings does not deny subjective aspects of existance.

19

[QUOTE=Half Man Half Wit]
Best as I can gather, one has committed the ‘fallacy of reductionism’ if one reduces a given system in such a manner that emergent phenomena no longer show; for instance, ‘life’ cannot be explained on a molecular level - we’re not much different from rocks in that way - but is a property of the ‘living system’ as a whole, or rather of the interactions within the system.
This doesn’t open up the gates for any kind of metaphysical explanation, however; in fact I’d say that the argument is fallaciously applied in your example, since there is no reasoning about the properties that are supposedly ‘lost in reduction’.
[/QUOTE]

I think this is the closest description I have seen to intelligent arguments against reductionism. This point of view was actually expressed well, in his own unique way, by Bob Laughlin who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1998? for his theoretical explanation of the fractional quantum hall effect. Laughlin, who is quite a character, gave a speech at the 1999 Centennial Meeting of the American Physical Society. In it, he lashed out at the view sometimes expressed by high energy / particle physicists (and that had been expressed in a talk earlier in the conference by Steven Weinberg, I believe) that other physics may be interesting but they (the high-energy physicists) are studying the real fundamental stuff that explains our universe.

Laughlin began the talk by putting up a slide that listed the things that he felt would not be explained by the final “theory of everything” that high-energy physicists are pursuing. The first four things listed were earth, air, fire, and water, after which it got a little more stream-of-conscious with things like hippos and chocolate.

The “meat” of Laughlin’s talk was that something like the fractional quantum hall effect is fundamentally a collective phenomenon that emerges when you put a lot of elementary particles together and which you never could have predicted simply based on the properties of the individual particles in isolation. I still remember how at the conclusion of his talk, Laughlin in his grandiose and belligerent way said, “And, so as we close out the 20th century, reductionism is finally dead!”

Of course, if you look at the theory of the fractional quantum hall effect, it involves the fundamental particles, namely electrons. But, the point he was making (at least as I understand it) is that when you put a whole bunch of electrons together, they behave in ways that you would never had guessed if all you looked at is how each electron behaves independently. So, basically, that even if you are able to describe the behavior of a single electron very well, you haven’t really gotten that far in explaining the interesting phenomena that exist in the world, which isn’t to say that it is not necessary to understand this but that it is hardly sufficient.

20

Actually, I just looked up the Wikipedia entry for Laughlin and it notes that he has put down these ideas in a book: