Kind Of Reductionism Research Articles

Integrated Energy Solutions: A Call for Inclusion of Non-Technical Factors

The central supposition put forward in this paper is that typical building-related energy efficiency measures do not automatically yield the looked-for large-scale environmental effects. Rather, many such measures entail two kinds of reductionism, in that they i) treat buildings detached from the larger system (such as the urban context), to which they belong; ii) concentrate on solutions, which are predominantly technological in nature. As a consequence, the complexity of the challenge may be neglected, along with other non-technical, yet potentially critical areas of concern. Such areas include, inter alia, economy, politics, policy, as well as societal and psychological circumstances. In this paper, we discuss a few typical instances of such reductionist stances to shed light on factors that impede their utility. Moreover, we highlight a few instances of systemic methods that have been suggested as having the potential to address complex problems in general, and the environmental implications of energy efficiency measures in the context of the built environment in particular.

De kerk en de geesteswetenschappen: interpretatieve praktijken en hermeneutische kaders

Literature on religion and science is vast; that on the humanities and the Christian faith much less so. This essay explores this largely uncharted territory by identifying several remarkable affinities and tensions between the church’s interpretive practices (e.g., in reading the Bible) and those fostered in the humanities (e.g., in analyzing a play of Shakespeare). It then analyzes these tensions in terms of three kinds of reductionism: methodical, contextual, and ontological reductionism. The article identifies some historical, philosophical, and theological resources to remedy these various forms of reductionist thinking. The article ends with a plea to clergy that they not too quickly assume that the relationship between the church and the humanities is fraught with tension. Offering prospective students an anti-reductionist hermeneutical framework will prepare better for study in the humanities

Essays in Narrative and Fictionality: Reassessing Nine Central Concepts

Essays in Narrative and Fictionality: Reassessing Nine Central Concepts

Reductionism: Friend or Foe of an Integrative Social Psychology?

I begin my address by identifying three vertical directions of reductionism (upward, horizontal, and downward) with ontological (descriptive) and epistemological (explanatory) forms. Following a brief discussion of horizontal reductionism, I deal with upward reductionism in terms of postmodernist thought and its influence on social scientists. In my discussion of downward reductionism, I reject ontological (descriptive) reductionism while embracing a qualified version of epistemological (explanatory) reductionism. While admitting psychological and biological variables to explanation of social phenomena, this qualified version of explanatory reductionism maintains that individual-level variables cannot explain social phenomena without residue because such phenomena have emergent properties. I support my argument by discussing the perceived threat of neuroscience by psychologists and the lesson it holds for sociology and social psychology with respect to employing individual-level explanatory variables. Following a discussion of affect control theory and cultural sociology as examples of the qualified version of explanatory reductionism advanced in this address, I present a model of an integrative social psychology, locating different kinds of reductionism and social psychological theories in this model.

In defence of constitutive rules

Although the notion of constitutive rule has played an important role in the metaphysical debate in social and legal philosophy, several authors perceive it as somewhat mysterious and ambiguous: the idea of a specific kind of rules that are supposed to be “magically” constitutive of reality seems suspicious, more a rationalistic fiction than a genuine explanation. For these reasons, reductionist approaches have been put forward to deflate the explanatory role of this notion. In this paper, I will instead try to defend constitutive rules. My thesis is that the notion of constitutive rule is explanatorily helpful because it gives a complete account of an important phenomenon in the social and legal domain, namely, that of artifactual entities endowed with statuses that can have emergent normative properties. Conceiving of these entities as rule-constituted artifacts is an important part of what H. L. A. Hart called “the internal point of view” toward law, and for this reason constitutive rules should be included in an explanation of that point of view as an integral part of the life of institutions. The structure of my argument will be as follows. First, I will provide an example of an important phenomenon in the internal point of view, namely, the fact that individuals can have normative reactions not about the specific regulation of an institution but about its underlying purpose and rationale—what in the legal domain is called the ratio of a norm. Then I will identify two reductionistic approaches on constitutive rules. The first approach is exemplified by Brian Epstein’s idea that the phenomena explained by constitutive rules are better explained in terms of metaphysical (grounding/anchoring) relations. The second kind of reductionism is instead exemplified by the idea (held by several authors, among whom Alf Ross, Riccardo Guastini, Frank Hindriks, and Francesco Guala) that the phenomena explained by constitutive rules can be accounted for in terms of regulative rules plus a certain terminology. I will try to show that neither of these approaches can explain normative reactions to the ratio of an institution from an internal point of view: While the first cannot explain the fact that the reaction is strongly normative, the second cannot explain the fact that the reaction is about the ratio of a normative entity. Constitutive rules can instead explain both things and should be preserved as an important notion for the analysis of institutional ontology. By way of constitutive rules we create something: immaterial, rule-based institutional artifacts that can have emergent normative properties.

Modern oriental reading (reception) of Islam in the works of Max Weber

In this paper we analyse Max Weber's view on Islam as a religion of warriors who lived at the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, and also, we analyse this interpretation in the context of Edward Said’s (orientalistic) theoretical approach. The first part of the paper presents various aspects of the analysis of Islam by Max Weber, which must be taken into the context of comparative theology, that is, in the light of considering the characteristics of Islam against the background of other world religions. In the second part of the work, we will analyse the concept of Said’s orientalism. We will construct the framework of moderate orientalism, which, according to the author of this paper, is an important conceptual adjustment that can contribute to a better understanding and analysis of various oriental discourses, including Weber discourse. Taking into account that we are talking about the most influential classics sociologists, especially in the case of the sociology of religion, it is very important to critically analyse his understanding of Islam so that we can determine which of his conclusions are significant for the sociology of religion and the sociology of Islam today, and which of his hypotheses can we attribute to some kind of reductionism or orientalism.

BUDDHA AND HARD ELIMINATIVISM

An appropriate description for the Buddha's philosophy of persons within the frame of materialist philosophy of mind, prima facie, would understandably be a kind of reductionism, given that the Buddha reduced the self to nothing but a collection of impersonal and impermanent psychophysical elements. In this article, I argue that this view is only appropriate for understanding the self within conventional reality, as is the term used by Buddhists, and does not tackle the other half, namely, ultimate reality. I claim that eliminative materialism provides a more accurate description of the Buddha's prescriptive practice, and although falling prey to the same problems that reductionism faces, creates a good basis for an alternative position of the Buddha as a Hard Eliminativist.

Joan Cuscó. Subjectivitat i Creativitat. Temps, memòria i creació. Barcelona: Publicia, 2018, 392 p.

Joan Cusco’s work Subjectivitat i Creativitat. Temps, memoria i creacio (Subjectivity and Creativity. Time, memory and creation) is an attempt to comprehend creativity thruough the filter of subjectivity. The epigraph of the book already anticipates the trajectory and logic of the research presented by the author, who, in the form of an erratic movement—various authors, apparently heterogeneous—explores and discovers, as an explorer in an unknown land, a clear image, elaborated in a solid and disciplined project: the nature of human subjectivity. As the author tells us, subjectivity will be the way to approach or try to understand human creativity; and this approach will be done—as if it were a composition of a musical chord, constituted by four notes—through the comprehension and mutual relationship between mind, brain, consciousness and language. The research presented by Cusco is based on a plural and multifocal approach between scientific knowledge, philosophy and art, always avoiding reductionists views and encouraging unconditional dialogue between these disciplines or perspectives. Throughout his composition, the author progressively reveals a certain conception of human thought or of human nature in general terms. Human nature, Cusco defends, must be understood from the dialectic between necessity and possibility, that is, from the double perspective of understanding our existence as organisms attached to certain necessities and possibilities open up by our symbolic capacity. It is in this manner that the author tries to capture the space that separates biology from artistic creation; and he does this by avoiding at all times to fall into any kind of reductionism, mainly in the idealism that considers humans as singular beings in the bosom of creation; and also avoiding various forms of dualism, such as the one between biology and culture, between body and mind, and ultimately between philosophy and science. The whole work shows an extraordinary mastery of specialised literature on the issues addressed, from biology to philosophy, through art and artistic creation. Especially noteworthy is the attention to Catalan thinkers and scientists, often neglected by the academic research done in Spain itself—an element that shows how Cusco’s work has a clear international aspiration and remains rooted in the fruitful production of his homeland.

Nonclassical Systemics of Quasicoherence: From Formal Properties to Representations of Generative Mechanisms. A Conceptual Introduction to a Paradigm-Shift

In this article, we consider how formal models and properties of emergence, e.g., long-range correlations, power laws, and self-similarity are usually platonically considered to represent the essence of the phenomenon, more specifically, their acquired properties, e.g., coherence, and not their generative mechanisms. Properties are assumed to explain, rather than represent, real processes of emergence. Conversely, real phenomenological processes are intended to be approximations or degenerations of their essence. By contrast, here, we consider the essence as a simplification of the phenomenological complexity. It is assumed to be acceptable that such simplification neglects several aspects (e.g., incompleteness, inhomogeneities, instabilities, irregularities, and variations) of real phenomena in return for analytical tractability. Within this context, such a trade-off is a kind of reductionism when dealing with complex phenomena. Methodologically, we propose a paradigmatic change for systems science equivalent to the one that occurred in Physics from object to field, namely, a change from interactional entities to domains intended as extensions of fields, or multiple fields, as it were. The reason to introduce such a paradigm shift is to make nonidealist approaches suitable for dealing with more realistic quasicoherence, when the coherence does not consistently apply to all the composing entities, but rather, different forms of coherence apply. As a typical general interdisciplinary case, we focus on so-called collective behaviors. The goal of this paper is to introduce the concepts of domain and selection mechanisms which are suitable to represent the generative mechanisms of quasicoherence of collective behavior. Domains are established by self-tracking entities such as financial or are effectively GPS-detectable. Such domains allow the profiling of collective behavior. Selection mechanisms are based on learning techniques or cognitive approaches for social systems.

Beyond Trump? A critique of Nancy Fraser’s call for a new left hegemony

Nancy Fraser’s essay ‘From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump – and Beyond’ is an important intervention in current discussions of Trumpism and how the left, broadly, should understand and respond to it. Fraser’s piece is an admirable effort to situate Trumpism in a broader and deeper political–economic context. At the same time, her argument suffers from a kind of reductionism and takes comfort from a questionable grand narrative of emancipation that is difficult any longer to take seriously. It thus warrants both careful attention and serious criticism. My basic political point: Fraser’s version of ‘socialism or barbarism’ is unconvincing, and the adamant and principled defence of liberal democracy, and its further reform, ought to be a priority for left liberals and leftists more generally who are serious about countering right-wing populist authoritarianism.

L'education morale: reinventer les logiques de la reflexion

This article deals with the cognitive aspect of moral judgment. In the first part, an instance of scientism is brought to light: the kind of reductionism according to which a judgment must conform to the canons of deductive logic if it is to have any epistemological value. In the second part, it is argued that moral thinking follows another logic, requires other kinds of knowing, and calls for a different type of rationality. Therefore, theory and practice of moral education demand a revision of dominant models of knowledge, of rationality , and of the development of thinking.

The Sum of the Parts: Large-Scale Modeling in Systems Biology

Systems biologists often distance themselves from reductionist approaches and formulate their aim as understanding living systems “as a whole.” Yet, it is often unclear what kind of reductionism they have in mind, and in what sense their methodologies would offer a superior approach. To address these questions, we distinguish between two types of reductionism which we call “modular reductionism” and “bottom-up reductionism.” Much knowledge in molecular biology has been gained by decomposing living systems into functional modules or through detailed studies of molecular processes. We ask whether systems biology provides novel ways to recompose these findings in the context of the system as a whole via computational simulations. As an example of computational integration of modules, we analyze the first whole-cell model of the bacterium M. genitalium. Secondly, we examine the attempt to recompose processes across different spatial scales via multi-scale cardiac models. Although these models rely on a number of idealizations and simplifying assumptions as well, we argue that they provide insight into the limitations of reductionist approaches. Whole-cell models can be used to discover properties arising at the interfaces of dynamically coupled processes within a biological system, thereby making more apparent what is lost through decomposition. Similarly, multi-scale modeling highlights the relevance of macroscale parameters and models and challenges the view that living systems can be understood “bottom-up.” Specifically, we point out that system-level properties constrain lower-scale processes. Thus, large-scale modeling reveals how living systems at the same time are more and less than the sum of the parts. Part of a special issue, Ontologies of Living Beings, guest-edited by A. M. Ferner and Thomas Pradeu

Physicians of the Body Versus Therapists of the Word: Reflections On Medicine and Sophistry

The aim of the present paper is to investigate the connection between ancient medicine and sophistry at the end of 5th century B.C. Beginning with analyses of some passages from the De vetere medicina (VM), De natura hominis (NH) and De arte, the article identifies many similarities between these treatises, on the one hand, and the sophistic doctrines, on the other: these concern primarily perceptual/intellectual knowledge and the interaction between reality, knowledge and language. Among the Sophists, Gorgias was particularly followed and imitated, as he was admired not only for his tremendous rhetorical skills, but also for his philosophically significant work On not being, which probably influenced various discussions in the Hippocratic treatises. However, if Gorgias argues in favor of language as dynastēs megas, the authors of VM, NH and De arte consider knowledge to be far more relevant and reliable than logos. These Hippocratic treatises criticize the philosophical thesis and the resulting kind of reductionism. Above all they defend the supremacy of medicine over any other art. By using the same argumentative and rhetorical strategies that were employed by Gorgias, these treatises reverse the thought of those Sophists who exalted only the technē tōn logōn.

I Am a Lot of Things: A Pluralistic Account of the Self

Abstract When I say that I am a lot of things, I mean it literally and metaphysically speaking. The Self, or so I shall argue, is a plurality (notwithstanding the fact that ordinary language takes “the Self” to be a singular term – but, after all, language is only language). It is not a substance or a substratum, and it is not a collection or a bundle. The view I wish to advocate for is a kind of reductionism, in line with some – but not all – broadly Humean ideas. In short, I will defend the view there are the experiences and mental states we have, and that’s it: no additional substances, and no bundles. This does not mean, however, that there is no Self – the Self simply is the experiences. I will try to articulate and defend this view by showing that it can accommodate what I take to be the three main desiderata for any theory of the Self to satisfy: first, that the Self is the subject of experience (a subject of mental states, in general); second, that there is a unity to the Self in the sense that our (conscious, phenomenal) experience is at least partly continuous or ‘stream-like’; and third, that we do not die when we go to sleep or when we otherwise don’t have any (conscious, phenomenal) experiences.

Colloquium 3: Two Dogmas Of Platonism

Contemporary platonism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is the belief in a fundamental cleavage between intelligible but invisible Platonic forms that are real and eternal, and perceptible objects whose confinement to spacetime constitutes an inferior existence and about which knowledge is impossible. The other dogma involves a kind of reductionism: the belief that Plato’s unhypothetical first principle of the all is identical to the form of the good. Both dogmas, I argue, are ill-founded.

From Gestalt to Structure

This paper outlines the earliest writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: his proposals in the early 1930s which study a synthesis of science and philosophy as well as his first text, The Structure of Behavior (completed in 1938, published in 1942). The first section of the paper traces the historical development of his thought from a simple championing of the sciences (in contrast to the dominant neo-Kantian philosophy of the time) to a strongly critical stance toward any kind of reductionism in psychology. The second section describes how Merleau-Pomty’s critique of psychology’s overestimation of the ability to localize the causes of behavior leads him to limit the reach of scientific psychology. In conclusion, it outlines how his early idea of structure in psychology is offered as a solution to poles of naïve materialism in the sciences and abstract intellectualism in philosophy.

Enantiomorphy and Time

This article argues that time‐asymmetric processes in spacetime are enantiomorphs. Subsequently, the Kantian puzzle concerning enantiomorphs in space is reviewed to introduce a number of positions concerning enantiomorphy, and to arrive at a dilemma: one must either reject that orientations of enantiomorphs are determinate, or furnish space or objects with orientation. The discussion on space is then used to derive two problems in the debate on the direction of time. First, it is shown that certain kinds of reductionism about the direction of time are at variance with the claim that orientation of enantiomorphic objects is intrinsic. Second, it is argued that reductive explanations of time‐asymmetric processes presuppose that enantiomorphic processes do not have determinate orientation.

Genetics and the History of Latin America

Genetics and the History of Latin America

What Is Psychology About? Toward An Explicit Ontology

Commentators have criticized psychology's overemphasis on method and its simultaneous neglect of questions regarding the subject matter and purpose of psychology. This article summarizes four problems that have resulted from the privileging of method, and in each case illustrates how an explicit ontology provides at least partial solutions to these problems. This article also suggests three metatheoretical assumptions based on the thinking of William James that would allow for the establishment of an explicit ontology and that would allow for psychological entities per se to be studied without the threat of biological or other kinds of reductionism. Finally, concerns that may arise in the formation of an explicit ontology are briefly addressed.

REVIEW OF THE WAR BETWEEN MENTALISM AND BEHAVIORISM: ON THE ACCESSIBILITY OF MENTAL PROCESSES BY WILLIAM R. UTTAL

Uttal's goals in writing this book are (a) to demonstrate that the war between mentalism and behaviorism is unwinnable because both sides are fundamentally flawed and (b) to describe a new version of behaviorism that resolves the conflict. The book is generally well written and contains many interesting and important points, but the goals are not attained because of weaknesses in some of the crucial analyses. For example, key terms such as mind and behavior are not defined; the scientific admissibility of inference is denied for philosophical reasons that are not relevant to inference as actually used; the accessibility of mind is both explicitly denied and implicitly assumed; two kinds of reductionism—between and within domains—are acknowledged but the distinction is not consistently maintained; and the proposed new behaviorism ignores rather than solves the old problems.