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Synthese (2011) 181:209226
DOI 10.1007/s11229-010-9798-z
Received: 3 December 2009 / Accepted: 26 July 2010 / Published online: 7 September 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
Abstract This paper concerns reductionist views about psychology and the special sciences more generally. I identify a metaphysical assumption in reductionist views which I dub the MicroMacro Mirroring Thesis. The Mirroring Thesis says that the relation between the entities of any legitimate higher-level science and their lower-level realizers is similar to that between the entities of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. I argue that reductionism implies the Thesis, and that the Thesis is not a priori. It is more difcult to tell whether the Thesis is true, and I indicate some relevant considerations.
Keywords Reduction Philosophy of mind Functionalism
Second-order property
Multiple realization has long been the standard objection to reductionism. I think we should agree with reductionists that the objection is at least somewhat supercial. Multiple realization forces some uncomfortable semantic choices on the reductionist, but as Jaegwon Kim has long maintained, for example, it is compatible with multiple realization that the autonomy of higher-level sciences remains merely taxonomic. On this view, the special sciences merely reclassify lower-level causal and nomic relations in convenient ways, but ways that are metaphysically somewhat arbitrary. I will argue that there is logical space for a more causally robust type of nonreductionism.
My strategy in what follows is to look rst at the problem of multiple realization and the initial semantic response to it. I will suggest that there is a metaphysical assumption hidden in this semantic response, which I call the MicroMacro Mirroring Thesis. Then I will argue that this assumption is not a priori.
E. Hiddleston (B)
Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Reductionism and the MicroMacro Mirroring Thesis
Eric Hiddleston
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210 Synthese (2011) 181:209226
1 Functional states v. functional descriptions
Functionalism about X is in general the view that X is dened by what it does. Functionalist views of the mental became prominent in the 1960s, and are widely accepted at least for intentional mental states (belief, desire). The view is plausible for many properties of the special sciences. Some even hold that all genuinely causal or explanatory properties are functional (Shoemaker 1984, 1998).
One of the...