"Reductionism"

[Catmatic Leftist]

I see this word a lot when RevLefters are arguing amongst each other. What exactly does this concept mean? Is there an example of reductionism and non-reductionism? And since it's usually talked about in a pejorative sense, why is it bad?

Sorry for sounding a little ignorant, but discussions that get History or Philosophy heavy tend to boggle my mind.

[JazzRemington]

When someone is charged with "reductionism," it usually means he/she is ignoring any complexities of something and claiming one thing (and only one thing) explains, e.g., a particular phenomenon.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Take any concept A with diverse and complex manifestations

Identify particular C from within those diverse manifestations

Argue that the features of this particular C define the essence of the whole concept

An example would be if a scientist took the biological reality that people reproduce, then used the ubiquity of sex to argue that the sex drive effectively explains the complexity of all human existence. An example of a reductionism along these lines could be the belief by some "psychoanalysts" that all male actions are driven by the Oedipal complex. Another example would be that people are only religious because they are superstitious. In both cases, they take interesting phenomena, ie the presence of superstition in a lot of religious practice, and use it to explain the bigger whole which is, in fact, more complex.

[Catmatic Leftist]

So is it logically fallacious to use reductionistic methods? Why or why not?

[JazzRemington]

No, because that's what scientists do when, say, trying to determine the cause of a disease. If reductionism was something to be avoided, medical science would grind to a halt.

[OhYesIdid]

No, because that's what scientists do when, say, trying to determine the cause of a disease. If reductionism was something to be avoided, medical science would grind to a halt.


Forgive my intruding, but I don't believe that identifying the cause behind disease is the same as Reductionism.
Anyway, Reductionism refers more to the Social sciences, such as history, economics, psychology,etc... fields where complexity is appreciated and have been long plagued by oversimplification.

[syndicat]

Forgive my intruding, but I don't believe that identifying the cause behind disease is the same as Reductionism.


yeah, this is not a form of reductionism. diseases are first identified by people with a set of symptoms, a syndrome of some kind. identified the cause of the disease then identifies some agent that is the cause of those symptoms showing up.

on the left the form of reductionism that is usually discussed is class reductionism. this is where an economic class structure is taken as the structure cause of a variety of other patterns or forms of oppression, such as sexual or racial inequality. these then are asserted to not have any autonomous source or dynamic.

this is different than the disease example because in that case the symptoms are events or a syndrome of effects, not a structure in its own right, whereas racism and patriarchy can be regarded as structural patterns in their own right.

[ZeroNowhere]

So is it logically fallacious to use reductionistic methods? Why or why not?'Reductionism' is not a fallacy, it is a slur. Generally, what lies behind the charge of reductionism is the charge that the reductionist is wrong, and arguing that somebody is wrong in describing the world hasn't got much to do with logical fallacies.

[Kronsteen]

The word 'Reductionism' has a rigorous use...and a polemical use.

If I say that the thoughts a person has are explicable entirely in terms of neurons firing and neurotransmitters releasing in their brain, that's reductionism in the rigorous, scientific, useful sense. Without a brain and it's actions, there can be no thoughts - there's no need to posit a 'soul' or 'life essence' in the process.

If, however, I say your thoughts don't really exist, that they're just an illusion created by neuron's firing, that you're not really thinking at all - you just think you're thinking, then you'd be right in calling me a reductionist in the second sense.

But because almost no one genuinely holds the second position (because it's self-refuting), advocates of the first position get caricatured by opponants as advocates of the second.

Most leftists are not very careful about matters of science or philosophy, so they tend to use the word in the second way - as a strawman and an insult.

[turquino]

If, however, I say your thoughts don't really exist, that they're just an illusion created by neuron's firing, that you're not really thinking at all - you just think you're thinking, then you'd be right in calling me a reductionist in the second sense.

But because almost no one genuinely holds the second position (because it's self-refuting), advocates of the first position get caricatured by opponants as advocates of the second.
Isn't the second position essentially epiphenomenalism? Our experience of mental life is the aftereffect of the brain doing its thing. Like when we think we are making a decision, the brain has already made that decision. Our awareness of decision-making is only an aftereffect.

[Kronsteen]

Isn't the second position essentially epiphenomenalism?

Epiphenominalism would be a version of the second position - indeed, one that isn't self-refuting, which isn't something I'd considered. Not that I think it's more than a redressed behaviorism.

IMO it's fairly obvious that the 'surface' of the mind - with thoughts we can consciously recognise and have other thoughts about - has depths of half-conscious and unconscious processing, most of which may not be translatable into conscious terms.

But that doesn't mean humans are nothing more than lumbering robots (to steal Richard Dawkins' image) that have programming code sufficiently complex to catch glimpses of it's own workings. It just means there are 'forces' in each person, only some of which are visible or controllable - and that's been a truism of psychology for over a century.