Philosophy ontological reduction

These are only some of the many examples which show that the concepts of ontological reduction and of ontological dependence are completely meaningful and have a venerable tradition in the history of philosophy and of science. On the basis of this tradition we, as philosophers of science, are entitled to use them, even with the purpose of rejecting ontological reductionism. 

Hendry RF (2006) Is there downward causation in chemistry In Baird D, Scerri E, McIntyre L (eds) Philosophy of chemistry. Synthesis of a new discipline. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 173-189 Hendry RF (2010a) Chemistry emergence vs. reduction. In Macdonald C, Macdonald G (eds) Emergence in mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 205-221 Hendry RF (2010b) Ontological reduction and molecular structure. Stud Hist Philos Mod Phys 41 183-191... 

Reduction in the philosophy of science is usually regarded as being a relation instantiated by pairs of theories, or scientific models, rather than by pairs of properties, event-types or states of affairs. It is thus time to distinguish between two versions of reduction - theory reduction and ontological reduction ... 

Let me add this proviso In contexts of explication, one may feel free to drop one criterion in favor of another. One case in point is this As already mentioned, in the philosophy of science, it is common to drop an assumption imposed by the paradigmatic cases, namely, that reduction should connect kinds or phenomena or events (in any primary sense of the term reduction ). Approaches to reduction that take theories to be the primary relata of the reduction relation follow this idea. This is usually justified by arguing that the idea of ontological reduction is just confused. We will turn back to this assumption later on. Let me close this introduction with a few terminological remarks. 

We have thus sketched the four most prominent suggestions for defining reduction in the philosophy of science. All these characterizations at least cover a case of identity-based reduction. However, it is not obvious how they should fit the explication proposed in Chaps. 4 and 5 all these characterizations are characterizations of a relation the primary relata of which are theories, or other scientific representational devices, rather than properties or other non-representational worldly objects. The next section offers a notion of theory reduction that is derivative on the notion explicated above. In Chap. 8 it will be argued that in fact, notions of theory reduction are derivative on notions of property reduction, that is it will be shown that the procedure to obtain a notion of theory reduction from a notion of ontological reduction proposed in the next section is in fact adequate. 

In the fourth paper I consider the ontological reduction of chemistry rather than epistemological reduction. As mentioned earlier, in this introduction, philosophers are not always persuaded by the naturalistic arguments that I presented in the previous paper. If present day quantum physics fails to fully reduce present day chemistry this may be due to some deficiencies in one or both of these enterprises. It may be due to our inability to bridge the computational gap effectively, even if the two descriptions are perfectly faithful in representing the fields of physics and chemistry. Many philosophers of a more analytical bent, who have not been persuaded by Quine s insistence that there is no first philosophy , are likely to ask whether there is any reason why chemistry is in principle not reducible to quantum physics. 

Le Poidevin, R. [2005] Missing Elements and Missing Premises, A Combinatorial Argument for the Ontological Reduction of Chemistry , British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 56, pp. 117-134. 

In Chapter 5.1, Reduction, Emergence and Physicalism Robin Hendry sets out the general framework within which the issue of reduction is addressed by philosophers, distinguishing between the issues of intertheoretic and ontological reduction as they apply to chemistry. The former issue has classically been the central topic of debate in the philosophy of science. Yet even if chemical theories are irreducible to physical theories, there remains the question of ontological reduction is the subject matter of chemistry in some sense just that of physics ... 

Le Poidevin, 2005] R. Le Poidevin. Missing elements and missing premises, a combinatorial argument for the ontological reduction of chemistry, British Journal for the Philosophy of... 

In a paper devoted to discussing the problem of the existence of the orbitals, we speak of a conceptual breakdown or conceptual discontinuity between molecular chemistry and quantum mechanics Whereas in quantum mechanics orbitaV is a non-referring term, in molecular chemistry orbitals exist as spatial regions on the basis of which the shape of the local and individual molecules can be explained (Labarca and Lombardi 2010a, p. 155). In that paper we stress that, in the last decades, many authors have recognized the conceptual discontinuity between the two theories (Woolley 1978 Primas 1983,1998 Amaim 1992). More recently, Hitme Hettema (2012, p. 368) talks about the ontological discontinuity between the terms of chemistry and those of physics certain terms used both in chemistry and in physics seem to refer to different items in the two disciplines. According to this author, such discontinui is one of the central problems in the philosophy of chemistry, around which many other problems, such as that of reduction, revolve. (Hettema 2012, p. 368). 

The most important terminological distinction for the discussion to come can briefly be described as the distinction between ontological talk and representational talk (for the application of a similar distinction to the reduction-debate, see Van Gulick 2001). Here is a bunch of ontological items philosophers in the philosophy... 

Heilman, Geoffrey P., and Frank W. Thompson. 1975. Physicahsm Ontology, determination, and reduction. Journal of Philosophy 72 551-564. 

Rohrlich, Fritz. 1988. Pluralistic ontology and theory reduction in the physical science. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 295-312. 

The two most prominent ontological positions in the philosophy of mind, type-identity theory and token-identity theory, build upon an understanding of reduction that is captured by the job-description that reduction is supposed to reconcile diversity and directionality with strong unity. These theories differ in their interpretation of where to look for unity - on the level of types or on the level of tokens. As such, they do not differ in other respects. Both sorts of theories are underdetermined with respect to directionality and diversity. The explication proposed above fixes these deficiencies. Moreover, it neatly matches the commitments concerning the... 

Whereas in the philosophy of mind the notion of reduction is frequently treated as the basis for ontological reductionism, this is a thesis that is not of primary interest for most parts of current philosophy of science. The distinction between reduction debates in the philosophy of science and in the philosophy of mind rests on an idealization, but it nicely illustrates two different tendencies in the two fields. One of the main differences between the philosophy of science debate and the debate in the philosophy of mind becomes apparent when we read the very first sentence of Jerry Fodor s (1974) seminal paper ... 

Hempel, Carl G. 1969. Reduction Ontological and linguistic facets. In Philosophy, science, and method Essays in honor of Ernest Nagel, ed. Morton White, Sidney Morgenbesser, and Patrick Suppes, 179-199. New York St. Martin s Press. 

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