Coherence and Reduction

Synchronic intertheoretic reductions are an important field of research in science. Arguably, the best model able to represent the main relations occurring in this kind of scientific reduction is the Nagelian account of reduction, a model further developed by Schaffner and nowadays known as the generalized version of the Nagel–Schaffner model (GNS). In their article (2010), Dizadji-Bahmani, Frigg, and Hartmann (DFH) specified the two main desiderata of a reduction á la GNS: confirmation and coherence. DFH first and, more rigorously, Tešic (2017) later analyse the confirmatory relation between the reducing and the reduced theory in terms of Bayesian confirmation theory. The purpose of this article is to analyse and compare the degree of coherence between the two theories involved in the GNS before and after the reduction. For this reason, in the first section, I will be looking at the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics and use it as an example to describe the GNS. In the second section, I will introduce three coherence measures which will then be employed in the comparison. Finally, in the last two sections, I will compare the degrees of coherence between the reducing and the reduced theory before and after the reduction and use a few numerical examples to understand the relation between coherence and confirmation measures.

THE COUNTERPOINT OF EARTH AND WORLD MEANINGS IN THE NATIONAL IDENTITY’ EXPRESSION

The meanings of the earth and the world can be associated with issues of national identity. In the article, the issues of fostering national identity are discussed in the context of M. Heidegger's philosophy‘s outlook on a land and world disputes. The article tries to define how much a nation can be an object of scientific cognition. Understanding the nation as a resistance to limiting objectification is a methodological background to the development of the topic, which obliges the philosophical interpretation of the problem to be trusted, at least as a scientific reduction of the problem. Sketches of the earth and the world we use as a kind of catalysts of intellectual imagination and methodological guides. The main aim of the article is the attempt to analyze the conditions of the expression of the national identity in terms of both the subject matter and the non-objective reflection, where different approaches complement each other (what we call by the term "counterpoint", borrowed from the theory of music). The collision of national identities through Martin Heidegger's typology of images has not been examined before. There are also discussed the untapped reserves for nurturing Lithuanian identity - both spiritual and economic. The aim is to refine the political awareness of the Public Treaty model raised by the Enlightenment thinkers. Land is an important factor in the economic development of a so ciety and the object of economic exploitation, but, more importantly, it is a standpoint in establishing and maintaining the nation's vitality. The dispute between the earth and the world which foster the thesis of national identity acquires the essence of the truth of being.

Per una fondazione ontologica della “riduzione consapevole e cooperante”

Il presente lavoro analizza i presupposti ontologici della metodologia scientifica identificata nella formula “riduzione consapevole e cooperante”. Viene studiata l’idea di essere sottesa alle riduzioni scientifiche, distinguendo tra riduzioni legittime e riduzionismo inadeguato, per valutare all’interno della metodologia clinica la complessità dell’agire scientifico. Si sono quindi ricercate le radici ontologiche della complessità nella scienza, approdando così al realismo dimensionale teorizzato per primo da Viktor Frankl. La rigorizzazione di questo modello analitico ci ha condotti a recuperare il tema filosofico dell’analogia quale strumento importante per la razionalità scientifica, in grado mantenere in tensione feconda tra loro i diversi elementi del discorso epistemologico. Questo percorso si è quindi sviluppato sulle condizioni di possibilità della conoscenza umana, rintracciando nella nozione di “potenzialità futura” il tratto distintivo dell’impresa conoscitiva. Il tema è quindi stato approfondito nei suoi fondamenti ontologici principali, analizzando i concetti di potenzialità e possibilità applicati all’ambito conoscitivo. La fondazione ontologica del modello conoscitivo analizzato viene pertanto trovata in un essere analogico, vale a dire composto su diversi livelli non esauribili concettualmente dall’indagine scientifica, ma neppure estranei alla capacità d’indagine umana. ---------- The present work develops the ontological presuppositions of scientific methodology labeled as “aware and cooperative reduction”. The idea of being underlying scientific reduction is analyzed by distinguishing among legitimate and improper reductionism. This framework is useful to assess within the context of clinical methodology the complexity of scientific practice. We also focus on the ontological roots of complexity in science, reaching to what Viktor Frankl has named “dimensional realism”. Thanks to this analytical model we recovered the theme of analogy as an important instrument of scientific rationality, which allows to keep together both the objective and the subjective instances of the epistemological domain. This speculative path lead us to ask about the conditions of possibility of human knowledge. In so doing, we have found the notion of “future potentiality” to be the mark of human knowledge. The result of our inquiry is that “analogical being” is the ontological foundation of scientific methodology. The ontological idea of “analogy” conveys an understanding of being constituted by different levels, or dimensions, which are not conceptually exhaustible within scientific research, but which are nevertheless accessible by human investigation.

Reductionism and qualia

The main purpose of this article is to face the following dilemma: either qualia (phenomenological or qualitative features of consciousness) constitute a permanent and irremovable barrier to the possibility of reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness, or there are possibility of speaking about the subjective consciousness in the conceptual frame of one successful science. In order to deal with this dilemma we are going to examine a justification of the traditional tendency to approach the qualia as having the specific epistemological, semantic and ontological status. Also, we are going to examine the most convincible arguments for this thesis. It will be suggested the general theory of scientific reduction with the specific attention to the case of reduction of mental to the physical. In view of the fact that all attempts to prove the "exceptionality" of qualia, in relation to the paradigmatic examples of successfully reductions in science, didn't succeed, we are going to argue that psycho-physical reduction is feasible and that there are no reasons for making the explanatory standards in the case of consciousness stronger then they are in the other cases.

A Defense of the Autonomy of Ethics: Why Value Is Not Like Water

There has recently been a revival of interest in ‘naturalizing’ ethics. A naturalization seeks to vindicate ethical realism — the idea that ethical judgments can be true reflections of a moral reality — without violating the naturalist constraint that science sets the limits of ontology. The recent revival has been prompted by examples of successful scientific reduction (e.g. temperature, water), and by the emergence of new, nonreductive naturalist strategies (e.g. for biological and mental properties). In this paper, I argue against such naturalist approaches to ethics. My argument builds on the traditional one offered by G.E. Moore, namely that a naturalization would fail to respect an existing difference between the meanings of moral and naturalistic terms. I defend this line of argument against the common claim that it cannot block ‘synthetic’ property identities, ones grounded not in meaning equivalences but in empirical discoveries (as in the cases of temperature and water). I then go on to show that the Moorean argument can make trouble even for recent revisionist and nonreductive naturalist approaches.