POLL: Reductionism

post by draq · 2010-11-04T17:55:20.027Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 10 comments

Contents

  Strong ontological reductionst
  Weak ontological reductionist
  Strong scientific reductionist
  Weak scientific reductionist
None
10 comments

Since there is no handy toll to create polls on LW, please post comments on your position.

As which of the following would you identify yourself? (I am not good at rationalist taboo, thus please excuse me for ambiguous terms.)

Strong ontological reductionst

See defintion on Wikipedia. Someone who believes that mental phenomena can be fully reduced to physics and that physics can be fully reduced to mathematics. That is, desires and electrons don't have any fundamental qualities, but are in the end mathematical objects. And nothing exists outside the mathematical realm.

Weak ontological reductionist

Someone who believes that mental phenomena don't have any qualities outside the domain of physics. Every aspect of mental phenomena can be fully reduced to physical phenomena. But physical phenomena are not necessarily mathematical objects.

Strong scientific reductionist

Someone who believes that quantum mechanics is wrong and Laplace's demon can exist in principle (if unrestricted by physical limitations). 

Weak scientific reductionist

Someone who concedes that it is impossible in principle to predict complicated physical systems, but that the concepts and theories in chemistry and biology are mere approximations and simplifications of complicated physical computations to sidestep the (faster-than-)exponential wall. That is, chemical and biological models are not fundamental, but are reducible to physical theories (if we had the theoretical computational power to simulate the models).

 

Please also comment if you are not a reductionist and explain what kind of reductionist you are not.

10 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by cousin_it · 2010-11-05T14:22:57.963Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

All four positions are too strong for me.

The "strong ontological" reductionist believes that nothing exists outside of math, but how does he know that? The "weak ontological" one believes the opposite statement, which has the same problem. The "strong scientific" guy disbelieves in quantum mechanics, which makes me wonder if he could have chosen a different name for himself. And the "weak scientific" one believes that prediction is impossible "in principle", rather than impossible under currently known physics.

I'm a pretty simple kind of reductionist: I believe that all observed and mental phenomena can be fully reduced to physics - that complex arrangements of bricks don't magically gain new properties that can't be explained in terms of the bricks themselves. But I know that deep physics has a tendency to turn out really, really weird, so I don't profess to believe or disbelieve any such statements as "we are nothing more than mathematical concepts" or "we can never know the future".

Replies from: David_Allen
↑ comment by David_Allen · 2010-11-05T16:03:03.740Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Well said cousin_it, and it matches my opinion as well.

comment by Spurlock · 2010-11-04T20:55:35.783Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

If we don't assume Laplace's demon to be located within the universe, can't we believe it's possible in principle without rejecting QM? As best I can tell, QM assuming MWI is still a deterministic system, it just appears otherwise to observers within the system because of the problems with subjective experience and entanglement.

Perhaps I should say: I believe it's impossible for Laplace's demon to exist, but I believe that if it did exist it would work (perfect information -> perfect predictions).

comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2010-11-04T21:16:41.953Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Since there is no handy toll to create polls on LW, please post comments on your position.

You can use external services, in particular Google Documents.

comment by CronoDAS · 2010-11-04T21:07:27.494Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Are these supposed to be mutually exclusive? 1 and 2 clearly are, but 3 and 4 seem to be consistent with 2.

comment by humpolec · 2010-11-04T18:26:09.375Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Your "strong/weak scientific" distinction sounds like it's more about determinism than reductionism.

According to your definitions, I'm a "strong ontological reductionist", and "weak scientific reductionist" because I have no problem with quantum mechanics and MWI being true.

Since there is no handy toll to create polls on LW

I often see polls in comments - "upvote this comment if you choose A", "upvote this if you choose B", "downvote this for karma balance". Asking for replies probably gives you less answers but more accuracy.

comment by Relsqui · 2010-11-05T04:10:42.504Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Please also comment if you are not a reductionist and explain what kind of reductionist you are not.

Surely if one is not a reductionist, the kind one is not is "all of them."

comment by David_Allen · 2010-11-04T19:56:24.030Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I struggled to understand your original descriptions, so I rephrased them. Does this capture your categorization?

  1. Strong ontological reductionist:
    • a) everything can be reduced to a mathematical object in a mathematical realm
    • b) nothing exists outside the mathematical realm
  2. Weak ontological reductionist:
    • a) mental phenomena are entirely physical in nature
    • b) everything does not necessarily reduce to mathematical objects in a mathematical realm
  3. Strong scientific reductionist:
    • a) the behavior of the universe is fundamentally deterministic
  4. Weak scientific reductionist:
    • a) the behavior of the universe is fundamentally probabilistic
    • b) it is impossible to predict specific outcomes in quantum level systems
    • c) concepts and theories in chemistry and biology are useful high level approximations of the fundamentally probabilistic universe
Replies from: draq
↑ comment by draq · 2010-11-04T20:12:18.418Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thanks for the rephrasing. I would amend:

  1. Weak scientific reductionist:
    c) concepts and theories in chemistry and biology are only useful high level approximations to physical models of the universe. They could be reduced to physical theories if b) does not apply.
Replies from: David_Allen
↑ comment by David_Allen · 2010-11-04T20:47:23.509Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

They could be reduced to physical theories if b) does not apply.

I find this confusing. Is this another condition or is this clarification? And I'm uncertain what you mean by "physical theories" in this context.

EDIT: It appears to me that 4.a implies 4.b, and that 4.b and 4.c are simply clarifications of 4.a. If this is the case perhaps we could just drop the controversial 4.c?