+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Science (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-61.html)
+--- Forum: Logic, Metaphysics & Philosophy (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-80.html)
+--- Thread: Why condensed matter physicists reject reductionism (philosophy of science) (/thread-10567.html)
Why condensed matter physicists reject reductionism (philosophy of science) - C C - Jul 1, 2021
https://bigthink.com/13-8/condensed-matter-physicists-reject-reductionism
- Reductionism — the philosophical position that all phenomena can be explained by interactions between particles — is not inherently a part of the scientific method.
- For example, most biological processes cannot be explained by appealing to quarks.
- Those who study complex phenomena, such as condensed matter physicists, often reject reductionism and embrace its alternative, known as emergence.
INTRO: Fundamentally, science is a path to understanding the world. It's a way to enter a dialogue with nature. Using the methods of science, certain kinds of questions — meaning questions that are posed in a particular kind of way — can get answered. Science is so successful at this question-answering task, however, that other ideas often get attached to it in a philosophical game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. It's in this often unconscious association that ideas that are not fundamentally part of the method we call science get tagged as "what science says."
One of these ride-along ideas is reductionism. Reductionism is a philosophical stance that claims that any explanation about the universe must reduce to the fundamental entities of physics, things like quarks and electrons.
Not long ago, I wrote an article about why reductionism is not what science "says" about the world. I introduced reductionism's philosophical alternative, known as emergence, and I promised to write more and continue unpacking the tension between these views. Today, as promised, we will dig a bit deeper into this ancient and critical question.
My post sparked some lovely conversations. Some folks agreed with what I was saying; others most certainly did not. That was pretty awesome from my point of view because conversations among people who disagree are the only way each side can learn more about their own points of view (and maybe have their minds changed). Based on that discussion, astronomer Jason Wright penned a cogent post on his perspective on reductionism. Later, Wright's post led to a really lovely piece by philosophers Thomas Metcalf and Chelsea Harami that laid out the reductionism vs. emergence debate. Those articles are worth reading.
Here's a summary of the debate: Emergence argues that, sometimes, when the fundamental entities of physics combine, they create fundamentally new kinds of behaviors and structures. Emergence argues that nature invents new things at higher levels of structure (hence, my claim that you are more than your atoms).
Philosophers then go on to distinguish between weak and strong emergence. Weak emergence sees all causes still being tracked back to the atoms, while strong emergence wants to claim that something truly new emerges at the higher levels. Also, much of this debate happens within a philosophical framework called "physicalism," which claims that everything that exists is, well, physical.
Conscious experience, and to a lesser degree life, are often identified as Ur-examples of strong emergence. Conscious experience is so weird that you can see why it's easy to tag it as an emergent phenomenon. But what about emergence — either strong or weak — in plain old physics? (MORE)
- - - - - -
Unlike those other instances of emergence, however, the manifestations of consciousness are not public "behaviors and structures" that can be observed or detected in the brain. And neural correlates of consciousness are simply more of the usual cellular arrangements, connections and biochemical activity. Nothing radically new has arisen in biological tissue or space in general.
Robot scientists who might lack phenomenal consciousness would dismiss the claim as an unfounded tradition or religious-like belief of humans. Since, again, the actual experiences themselves (of an extrospective world and introspective thoughts) are not detectable with even the aid of instruments. They're wholly private or personal, hidden affairs asserted by each individual.