The "yes and..." principle seems like a good way to look at reduction. We don't have to reject the reality of the composite phenomenon, only that it's something fundamental. But I'm saying that as a fellow reductionist. I wonder if the people who do want to see that phenomenon as fundamental would be convinced.
I think the reaction is centered on the same way many of us we feel when seeing an animal dissected. There's a feeling of something being violated, of the animal being disrespected, of it being trivialized. It's even stronger when we see it done to a human body. It's why early human anatomists had to work in secret. I suspect a lot of people have that reaction when thinking about human experiences being reduced (with love being a particularly stark example).
The wonder for me is that even if everything is "just" chemicals or "just" matter that means chemicals and matter are more amazing than we had previously thought. I love something the philosopher David Loy once wrote about Spinoza: if God is not other than the universe, this doesn't diminish God but elevates the universe. Thank you!
As a person who tells and writes stories, as well as dabbles in photography, I rely more on my senses and feelings than on the whys and wherefores, but your examples of reductionism adds another dimension to the creative process. Thank you for that.
I'm fine with deflationary explanations, they seem generally more useful than non-deflationary explanations. Only leave out the dismissive 'just' - in accordance with the 'yes, and' principle, you can often deflate the same concept in different directions depending on what you are trying to do with it.
I'd argue that linguistic overloading is relevant to the 'love is just chemicals' case: people pile many meanings into 'love', some of them contradictory, and attempting to reduce can help us realize that this is what is going on, and maybe escape some of that baggage.
The problem with the oral sex theory isn't that it oversimplifies, but that it's probably just wrong. Certainly, the authors would need to do a lot more work to prove that more commonsensical explanations are not to be preferred. More broadly, the type of evolutionary psychology being done here, which assumes that human behavior is generated by a multitude of modules that have very specific adaptive functions, is also just wrong in most cases and not an oversimplification.
To clarify, I meant the kind of meta-issue is oversimplifying all human behavior as needing a direct evolutionary fitness explanation, though some human behavior can best be explained in terms of evolutionary fitness (just like "all war is over resources" is wrong because it oversimplifies to making all about one thing, not because it is wrong that resources is often one of the motivations). But I didn't make that clear.
Completely agree that reductionist understanding adds to beauty instead of taking away from it! The details are where beauty lives and appreciating how those details lead to emergent phenomena is thrilling in it’s own way. And a deeper way to appreciate the rainbow.
I hate reductionism bashing. It is a response to taking reduction too seriously, mistaking the finger for the moon, or mistaking the backbone for the fish. Reduction gives us a thread or backbone on which to construct. I call my view of trees constructive rather than reductive, even though I try to hold in my mind's eye all of the reductions at once.
I completely agree that learning about something can add to its beauty. But I wonder if there’s something missing from all this. It feels to me like learning (or perhaps even the desire to learn?) can remove meaning from the world. In this case, I’m thinking of “meaning” as the feeling that we’re all part of some larger system. For many people this system of meaning is/was religion. Knowing the nature of something (like a rainbow) means that we can’t impose our own beliefs or meaning onto the rainbow. So even though I agree that prism-based theory of the rainbow is beautiful, It is now harder for me to, say, believe that the rainbow is a message from god. This belief (which I can no longer have) may have given me a greater sense of meaning and purpose than the true explanation (no matter how beautiful I find the explanation). Assuming people get their sense of meaning, purpose, belonging, etc. from some certain set of beliefs, greater understanding may diminish that feeling.
On its own, reductionism is generally useful and otherwise benign. I would say the same is true for cynicism. I think it's their combination that is feared and thereby often conflated.
Dawkins is somewhat of a special case. I think of him as, to Darwin, what Newton was to Einstein, but in reverse chronological order. His and others' gene-centric view would be foolish to Discard on account of its utility. However, Dawkins equivocates and reifies his own metaphors against those like Denis Noble.
Heuristical parsimony is wonderful for education. Learning physics sans Newton would be insane. But conflating that map for the territory has far greater overlap than the mathscrafted story of what evolution "selects for" while reasoning under deep uncertainty. Darwin was careful, minimally reductive and far from cynical. Dawkins is forever embattled and understandably ducks and weaves to the degree that his environment can be said to have "shaped him."
The "yes and..." principle seems like a good way to look at reduction. We don't have to reject the reality of the composite phenomenon, only that it's something fundamental. But I'm saying that as a fellow reductionist. I wonder if the people who do want to see that phenomenon as fundamental would be convinced.
I think the reaction is centered on the same way many of us we feel when seeing an animal dissected. There's a feeling of something being violated, of the animal being disrespected, of it being trivialized. It's even stronger when we see it done to a human body. It's why early human anatomists had to work in secret. I suspect a lot of people have that reaction when thinking about human experiences being reduced (with love being a particularly stark example).
But it can't hurt to try!
The wonder for me is that even if everything is "just" chemicals or "just" matter that means chemicals and matter are more amazing than we had previously thought. I love something the philosopher David Loy once wrote about Spinoza: if God is not other than the universe, this doesn't diminish God but elevates the universe. Thank you!
As a person who tells and writes stories, as well as dabbles in photography, I rely more on my senses and feelings than on the whys and wherefores, but your examples of reductionism adds another dimension to the creative process. Thank you for that.
I'm fine with deflationary explanations, they seem generally more useful than non-deflationary explanations. Only leave out the dismissive 'just' - in accordance with the 'yes, and' principle, you can often deflate the same concept in different directions depending on what you are trying to do with it.
I'd argue that linguistic overloading is relevant to the 'love is just chemicals' case: people pile many meanings into 'love', some of them contradictory, and attempting to reduce can help us realize that this is what is going on, and maybe escape some of that baggage.
The problem with the oral sex theory isn't that it oversimplifies, but that it's probably just wrong. Certainly, the authors would need to do a lot more work to prove that more commonsensical explanations are not to be preferred. More broadly, the type of evolutionary psychology being done here, which assumes that human behavior is generated by a multitude of modules that have very specific adaptive functions, is also just wrong in most cases and not an oversimplification.
You're right.
To clarify, I meant the kind of meta-issue is oversimplifying all human behavior as needing a direct evolutionary fitness explanation, though some human behavior can best be explained in terms of evolutionary fitness (just like "all war is over resources" is wrong because it oversimplifies to making all about one thing, not because it is wrong that resources is often one of the motivations). But I didn't make that clear.
Completely agree that reductionist understanding adds to beauty instead of taking away from it! The details are where beauty lives and appreciating how those details lead to emergent phenomena is thrilling in it’s own way. And a deeper way to appreciate the rainbow.
I hate reductionism bashing. It is a response to taking reduction too seriously, mistaking the finger for the moon, or mistaking the backbone for the fish. Reduction gives us a thread or backbone on which to construct. I call my view of trees constructive rather than reductive, even though I try to hold in my mind's eye all of the reductions at once.
I'm with Feynman.
I completely agree that learning about something can add to its beauty. But I wonder if there’s something missing from all this. It feels to me like learning (or perhaps even the desire to learn?) can remove meaning from the world. In this case, I’m thinking of “meaning” as the feeling that we’re all part of some larger system. For many people this system of meaning is/was religion. Knowing the nature of something (like a rainbow) means that we can’t impose our own beliefs or meaning onto the rainbow. So even though I agree that prism-based theory of the rainbow is beautiful, It is now harder for me to, say, believe that the rainbow is a message from god. This belief (which I can no longer have) may have given me a greater sense of meaning and purpose than the true explanation (no matter how beautiful I find the explanation). Assuming people get their sense of meaning, purpose, belonging, etc. from some certain set of beliefs, greater understanding may diminish that feeling.
On its own, reductionism is generally useful and otherwise benign. I would say the same is true for cynicism. I think it's their combination that is feared and thereby often conflated.
Dawkins is somewhat of a special case. I think of him as, to Darwin, what Newton was to Einstein, but in reverse chronological order. His and others' gene-centric view would be foolish to Discard on account of its utility. However, Dawkins equivocates and reifies his own metaphors against those like Denis Noble.
Heuristical parsimony is wonderful for education. Learning physics sans Newton would be insane. But conflating that map for the territory has far greater overlap than the mathscrafted story of what evolution "selects for" while reasoning under deep uncertainty. Darwin was careful, minimally reductive and far from cynical. Dawkins is forever embattled and understandably ducks and weaves to the degree that his environment can be said to have "shaped him."