Reduction and Elimination in Philosophy and the Sciences

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Literature Relating Theories. Models and Structural Properties in Intertheoretic Reduction — Rafaela Hillerbrand Batterman, Robert (2002) The Devil in the Detail, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Callender, Craig (2001) ``Taking Thermodynamics too Seriously'', in: Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 32, 539-553. Frigg, Roman 2008 `À Field Guide to Recent Work in the Foundations of Statistical Mechanics'', to appear in: Dean Rickles (ed.), The Ashgate Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Physics, London: Ashgate. Kitcher, Philip (1984) ``1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences'', in: Philosophical Review 93, 335-373. Lucas, Robert (1976) "Econometric Policy Evaluation: A Critique", in: Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy 1: 19-46. Nagel, Ernest (1974) `Ìssues in the Logic of Reductive Explanations'', in: Teleology Revisited, New York: Columbia University Press, 95-113. Pincock, Christopher (2007) `À Role for Mathematics in the Physical Sciences'', Noùs 41:2, 253-275. Schaffner, Keneth (1976) ``Reduction in Biology: Prospects and Problems'', in: Proceedings of the Biennial Philosophy of Science Association Meeting 1974}, 613-632. Schmidt, Jan C. (2004) `Ùnbounded Technologies: Working Through the Technological Reductionism of Nanotechnology'', in: D. Baird, A. Nordmann and J. Schummer (eds.), Discovering the Nanoscale, Amsterdam: IOS Press. Sklar (1993) Physics and Chance: Philosophical Issues in the Foundation of Statistical Mechanics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yi, Sang Wook (2003) ``Reduction of Thermodynamics: A Few Problems'', Philosophy of Science 70, 1028-1038. 143
The Constitution of Institutions Frank Hindriks, Groningen, The Netherlands Institutions depend on human beings for their existence. They are human constructs that would not be there if it were not for us. The challenge is to unpack this. Are they mere social constructs, or do they have a reality beyond our social categorizations? Institutions involve human beings and their (inter)actions. Can they simply be reduced to these? Or do they have a reality that goes beyond them? I shall suggest that institutions present us with a number of puzzles that justify a serious investigation into these issues. A US president has the power to veto laws not due to any superior physical or mental abilities, but because he is granted this power by the American people. Apparently, the powers of presidents do not depend on their intrinsic features only. Examples such as this one pose problems for a straightforward reduction of institutions to human beings and their (inter)actions. Taking constitution to be a (non-reductive) relation of unity without identity, I argue that such puzzles dissolve once institutions are taken to be constituted by human beings, their mental states, their interactions, and their surroundings. 1. Against Identity and Mereology Presumably institutional properties supervene on physical ones. Supervenience, however, is a fairly innocent relation. Both reductive and non-reductive materialists about the mental accept that mental properties in some sense supervene on physical ones. In order to provide an adequate ontology of institutions, then, relations other than supervenience have to be considered. The first one that I consider is identity, which is a relation between entities rather than between properties. I shall argue that institutions are not identical to the entities they consist of or are composed of (where these latter notions are used in a metaphysically innocent sense). For the purposes of this paper I focus on the case of organizations leaving other kinds of institutions for another occasion. Consider the United Nations (UN). The UN consists of countries, which are its members that are united by the Charter of the UN. Is the UN identical to the set of its members? Presumably not. The UN can enlarge its membership, while sets cannot. A set that has more members than another set is numerically distinct from that other set. The UN remains the same entity when it acquires a new member. What about organizations that have only one member? Are they identical to their members? A limited liability company (LLC) can consist of only one individual. Even if it does, however, an LLC is not identical to that person. An individual can create and later dissolve an LLC that has only one member, herself. Someone who does so existed before the LLC did, and she outlives it. So the persistence conditions of organizations differ from the entities they are made of. In other words, there is a difference regarding what accounts for their identity over time. 1 1 Cf. Ruben (1985) and Uzquiano (2004). 144 Are organizations mereological sums of their members? At least on some conceptions of them, mereological sums they do not have any (causal) properties their parts do not have (Lewis 1986). However, the Security Council of the UN has the power to adopt resolutions, but none of its members does. The UN can have a code of conduct and ensure compliance to it without any of its members doing so (recall that its members are countries). Similar claims hold for other organizations. An LLC can sue another company without any of its members doing so. And a choir can sing a cantata without any of its members doing so. The upshot is that organizations can have causal properties none of their members have. One can, of course, conceive of mereological relations in a more substantial way. The part-whole relation might be an ontological relation between parts and wholes each of which exist. Suppose it is also granted that wholes can have causal properties none of its parts have in isolation. Even then it would be inappropriate to conceive of the relation between organizations and their members as a mereological relation. This is because the part-whole relation is transitive while the membership relation as it applies to organizations is not. Countries consist of people, the UN consists of countries, but the UN does not consist of (exactly those) people: as a Dutch citizen, I am a member of the Netherlands; I am not, however, a member of the UN. To sum up, the relation between organizations and (collections of) human beings is not identity, nor is it a mereological relation. They differ in persistence conditions and causal properties. Furthermore, the relation between them is non-transitive. In the next section, I shall argue that, in order to accommodate these features, the relation between organizations and (the collections of) their members should be conceived of as constitution. 2. Constitution Constitution is a relation of unity without identity. It obtains, for instance, between a statue and the lump of clay of which it is made. These are united in that they consist of the same material. They are not identical to one another: the lump of clay can even when the statue does not; the statue can survive gradual replacement of the clay of which it consists resulting in a situation in which the statue still exists even though it contains none of the material of which it consisted originally. These two features can be captured in terms of a condition of material coincidence (1) and a modal condition (2), a condition that captures possibilities such as the non-existence of a statue in the presence of a lump of clay. In order to account for the fact that a particular lump of clay does constitute a statue further conditions have to be added. A notion of favourable conditions can serve a useful purpose here. Statues owe their status of art object to their surroundings. At a general level, they bear some relation to an art-world (Baker 1997). They might, for instance, have been commissioned as art objects. This is one of the conditions that are favourable for an object to constitute a statue. Such conditions explain why particular objects are statues. They account for this in that they can
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31 Alexander Hieke Hannes Leitgeb H
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Reduktion und Elimination in Philos
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Distributors Die Österreichische L
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6 Inhalt / Contents Wittgenstein me
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8 Inhalt / Contents The Evolution o
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Formal Mechanisms for Reduction in
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4. Property language and theoretica
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imperatives, or commands in the for
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Referential Practice and the Lure o
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The Augustinian account confuses mo
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hurried to fix it on the page. The
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The Essence (?) of Color, According
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Literature Austin, James 1980 “Wi
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Wittgenstein’s Externalism - Gett
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Informal Reduction E.P. Brandon, Ca
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An Anti-Reductionist Argument Based
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An Anti-Reductionist Argument Based
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Did I Do It? -Yeah, You Did! Wittge
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Literature Did I Do It? -Yeah, You
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tween the two approaches. The task
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On Two Recent Defenses of The Simpl
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On Two Recent Defenses of The Simpl
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Queen Victoria’s Dying Thoughts T
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Diagonalization. The Liar Paradox,
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Proof: Given a function ƒ from con
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that I am sure that it is true that
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experiencing something as a red pen
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There can be Causal without Ontolog
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There can be Causal without Ontolog
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objects. But they also leave unansw
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The Knower Paradox and the Quantifi
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The Knower Paradox and the Quantifi
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lent. It also implies that an inven
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The Scapegoat Theory of Causality M
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We may have evolved a specialized c
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easoning have their source in the l
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Wittgenstein on Frazer and Explanat
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genstein 1993, p. 143). In order to
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an adequate syntactic analysis of o
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Wittgenstein meets ÖGS: Wovon man
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Wittgenstein meets ÖGS: Wovon man
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3. Der Elementarsatz wird als Relat
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Literatur Glock, Hans Johann 2006
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Explaining the Brain: Ruthless Redu
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Occam’s Razor in the Theory of Th
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Literature Campbell, Donald T. 1987
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Page 98 and 99: Let T I be the minimal theory of tr
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Page 104 and 105: Zeitliche Ontologie und zeitliche R
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Page 108 and 109: The decisive consequences of this a
Page 110 and 111: Benacerraf and Bad Company (An Atta
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Page 114 and 115: Literature Benacerraf, Paul 1965
Page 116 and 117: "PA" by using "PA* ", at least at t
Page 118 and 119: Hard Naturalism and its Puzzles Ren
Page 120 and 121: The Mind-Body-Problem and Score-Kee
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Page 126 and 127: Reduction Revisited: The Ontologica
Page 128 and 129: 4. Conclusion Reduction Revisited:
Page 130 and 131: All in all, we have seen that reduc
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Page 134 and 135: Literature Cartwright, Nancy 1999:
Page 136 and 137: Wittgensteins Projektionsmethode al
Page 138 and 139: Schlussbemerkungen Wittgensteins Pr
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Page 142 and 143: Relating Theories. Models and Struc
Page 146 and 147: e invoked in response to the questi
Page 148 and 149: Do Brains Think? Christopher Humphr
Page 150 and 151: 4. Conclusion So do brains think or
Page 152 and 153: How Metaphors Alter the World-Pictu
Page 154 and 155: The Modal Supervenience of the Conc
Page 156 and 157: Literature van der Auwera, Johan an
Page 158 and 159: 3. The Determination of Form by Syn
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Page 162 and 163: Zwischen Humes Gesetz und „Sollen
Page 164 and 165: Assessing Humean Supervenience Amir
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Page 168 and 169: Aus der obigen Definition folgt, da
Page 170 and 171: Ding-Ontology of Aristotle vs. Sach
Page 172 and 173: Ding-Ontology of Aristotle vs. Sach
Page 174 and 175: How do Moral Principles Figure in M
Page 176 and 177: “Downward Causation”: Emergent,
Page 178 and 179: “Downward Causation”: Emergent,
Page 180 and 181: A with distinguished subset Z of te
Page 182 and 183: A Metaphysically Moderate Version o
Page 184 and 185: Literature Balashov, Yuri 2002 ''Wh
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Page 188 and 189: Problems with Psychophysical Identi
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Four Anti-reductionist Dogmas in th
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Four Anti-reductionist Dogmas in th
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notion of time and requires that so
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Some Remarks on Wittgenstein and Ty
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Some Remarks on Wittgenstein and Ty
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concrete particulars can be subject
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phenomenal concept of experiencing
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Metaphorische Bedeutung als virtus
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speaker is then attaching a special
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„Vom Weißdorn und vom Propheten
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„Die Einheit hören“ - Einige
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„Die Einheit hören“ - Einige
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S4) the necessity of arithmetic is
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Getting out from Inside: Why the Cl
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Dispensing with Particulars: Unders
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Literature Dispensing with Particul
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Reichenbach’s Concept of Logical
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Defining Ontological Naturalism Mar
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Literature Jackson, Frank 1986. “
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properties are located. This proces
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‘our conceptual scheme’ “is c
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Properties and Reduction between Me
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Does this mean that metaphysics sho
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do not pick out pain in a system by
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The Writing of Nietzsche and Wittge
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his teachings. He coincides with hi
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sense of a proposition without firs
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Naturalistic Ethics: A Logical Posi
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Literature Kant, Immanuel 2006 Crit
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What we now require is a bridge the
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Species, Variability, and Integrati
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could mention the many sorts of iso
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to work this way. Classic examples
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The Key Problems of KC Matteo Pleba
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have embraced the myth of prose: it
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5. Prior’s Problem As Patrick Bla
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Reductionism in Axiology: the Case
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developing of cancer tissue in huma
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(2) One-way Nagelian bridge princip
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Rethinking the Modal Argument again
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Rethinking the Modal Argument again
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that we are to find the features we
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Atypical Rational Agency Paul Raymo
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Literature Anscombe, G. E. M. 1957
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situation bieten sich keine Kriteri
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Two Reductions of ‘rule’ Dana R
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one that could take place, but does
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physics is not able to make, since
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Wittgenstein’s Attitudes Fabien S
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view of logic, in accordance with h
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Warum man auf transzendentalphiloso
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Making the Mind Higher-Level Elizab
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Literature Churchland, P. M. (1995)
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Zwischen Humes Gesetz und „Sollen
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Mental Causation: A Lesson from Act
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Again, this is mistaken. Non-reduct
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auf alle Arten von kontingenten Pro
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Reduction, Sets, and Properties Ben
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Literature Egan, Andy (2004): ‘Se
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there is a tension between evaluati
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The Elimination of Meaning in Compu
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sufficient to explain all of the em
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that 'A' and 'A' could never be tok
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the necktie sense) can differ in wh
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Supervenience and ‘Should’ Arto
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word 'norm' can be thought to expre
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Rule-following as Coordination: A G
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vast majority are bent: gruesome, g
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human life, the violent condition o
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A Division in Mind. The Misconceive
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A Division in Mind. The Misconceive
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could then deduce (1c) and conclude
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Neutral Monism. A Miraculous, Incoh
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Neutral Monism. A Miraculous, Incoh
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A somewhat Eliminativist Proposal a
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Impliziert der intentionale Redukti
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Impliziert der intentionale Redukti
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Structure of the Paradoxes, Structu
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Structure of the Paradoxes, Structu
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that he was working on a translatio
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Objects of Perception, Objects of S
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Objects of Perception, Objects of S
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Let us take the example of the hypo
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Reducing Sets to Modalities Rafał
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variables ai that (under an interpr
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Are Lamarckian Explanations Fully R
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A Note on Tractatus 5.521 Nuno Vent
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And he goes on saying, referring to
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The Place of Theory Reduction in th
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Ethik als irreduzibles Supervenienz
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unabhängig von denen ihrer Mitglie
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Das ‘schwierige Problem’ des Be
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The Supervenience Argument, Levels,
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The Supervenience Argument, Levels,
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their relations both to the physica
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On the Characterization of Objects
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On the Characterization of Objects
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The Functional Unity of Special Sci
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size, location, temporal characteri
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Transcendental Philosophy and Mind-
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From Topology to Logic. The Neural
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From Topology to Logic. The Neural
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The Calculus of Inductive Construct
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The Four-Color Theorem, Testimony a
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experience. Of course, a detailed a
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Clearly x = y → x = ext y holds,
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Intentional Fundamentalism Petri Yl
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The second dimension to be consider
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The very existence of the special s
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Heil, J. (1999), “Multiple Realiz
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independent of what is the fact, fa
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415
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Publications of the Austrian Ludwig
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