What I meant was "Reduction is possible in theory even if completely incomputable" seems to boil down to "I believe that physical matter is responsible for mental phenomena".
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Replying to @bradpwyble @o_guest and
But I already said I’m a materialist. Not sure how agreeing on materialism helps. Clearly there is no agreement in this thread (and branches) on ‘explanation’ and ‘reduction’ while we are all presumably materialists.
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Replying to @IrisVanRooij @o_guest and
I guess that's our point of disagreement. Does explain mean: Actually Explain vs. Could in theory be explained. What do you think?
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Replying to @barner_ucsd @bradpwyble and
I like to think of reductionism as a 4-yr old repeatedly asking the same question (but instead of the usual "why?", it's "how?"). -How does a toaster work? -Bread gets hot inside -How? -There's metal that heats up -How? -Electricity running through... ...And so on forever
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Replying to @neurograce @barner_ucsd and
It is the role of science to be able to go up and down every branch of that line of questioning & give satisfying answers. But for practical reasons, eventually you'll just tell the kid to go to sleep.
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Replying to @neurograce @barner_ucsd and
I'd also disagree that describing the properties of steel is necessarily a "bad explanation". It might be a perfect explanation for a physicist or someone who is trying to understand the cause of the heat at a molecular level.
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Replying to @bradpwyble @neurograce and
I'm not sure describing the child as being reductionist is correct in the example. It's the adult, the person answering, who is choosing to descend the levels of analysis to address the questions. Not the child.
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Replying to @o_guest @bradpwyble and
Good point. I recognize the infinite depth of (my) kids’ questions, but indeed they do not always mean to probe lower (reductive) levels. Sometimes more like ‘reasons’ or ‘purposes’ or ‘historical explanations’ or ‘rules’.
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Yup. I'm not expert on kids but they tend not to be reductionism over anything else IMHO.
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