Myth of the context-free object

[Magical Realist]

It is a common myth in science--this idea of the context-free object. As if the reason behind something is totally inherent to it, encoded in its cells, or neurons, or atoms. Meaning as compositional not circumstantial. But is this even true? What is the sense in talking about one unit alone, or one part of a whole, when that unit's or part's function is entirely dependent on its relations to other units or parts? There is a temporal process involved in the dynamic situation of the unit or part, such that it cannot even be understood apart from it. Neglecting this informative context fosters a further myth of understanding as reducibility of the whole to parts, which are further reduced to wholes defined by their parts, which totally leaves out the relationships that make up the structure of the parts. This structure IS the context in which the part is defined. There is no information in a pile of bricks defining those bricks as parts of a house. The house as a whole is the defining spatio-temporal matrix by which the bricks will acquire their "partness", their contribution and weighted value in the coherence of the house. This is even more obvious with the human being, a social unit in a complex pattern of spatio-temporal relationships to the world around it. The meaning or understanding of a human being cannot be reduced down to cells or neurons or atoms. They are defined by the living changing context or structure of their environment, a story of relationships and interactions and events that we collectively refer to as THEIR life experience.

[Yazata]

It is a common myth in science--this idea of the context-free object.

If we are talking about physical objects, they all exist in a larger context of space-time and of relations (causal or geometrical) with other objects.

As if the reason behind something is totally inherent to it, encoded in its cells, or neurons, or atoms. Meaning as compositional not circumstantial.

I don't think that science says that. (It sound more like the Aristotelians and their essences.) Science is all about discovering the causal histories of observed states of affairs. That's typically what 'scientific explanations' consist of. I get the impression that science imagines everything (except mathematics and the laws of physics perhaps ) to be contingent.

But is this even true? What is the sense in talking about one unit alone, or one part of a whole, when that unit's or part's function is entirely dependent on its relations to other units or parts? There is a temporal process involved in the dynamic situation of the unit or part, such that it cannot even be understood apart from it.

Should we ignore individual objects and instead think only about some vague whole? We couldn't live our lives that way. Imagine always thinking 'everything!, everything!, everything!', instead of thinking about any particular thing. It would be the reductio-ad-absurdem of our human intelligence.

Neglecting this informative context fosters a further myth of understanding as reducibility of the whole to parts, which are further reduced to wholes defined by their parts, which totally leaves out the relationships that make up the structure of the parts.

Reductive explanations seldom if ever ignore how parts interact to form wholes. That's typically the whole point of the explanation.

This structure IS the context in which the part is defined. There is no information in a pile of bricks defining those bricks as parts of a house. The house as a whole is the defining spatio-temporal matrix by which the bricks will acquire their "partness", their contribution and weighted value in the coherence of the house. This is even more obvious with the human being, a social unit in a complex pattern of spatio-temporal relationships to the world around it. The meaning or understanding of a human being cannot be reduced down to cells or neurons or atoms. They are defined by the living changing context or structure of their environment, a story of relationships and interactions and events that we collectively refer to as THEIR life experience.

That's a poetic way of putting it, I guess.

It's basically the same argument that I was making to you and CC a few years ago, when you two were arguing for panpsychism. You both wanted to argue that phenomenal qualities and the ability to experience them must be qualities of sub-atomic particles themselves, if human beings are composed of subatomic particles.

I tried to argue (perhaps not very well) that phenomenal qualities aren't qualities at all, in the substance-quality sense. In my opinion they are, to use your phrase, information encoded in "the living context or structure", in the "relationships and Interactions and events" that comprise the relations or our nervous systems with our environment.