Reductionism and its heuristics: Making methodological reductionism honest Export

@article{citeulike:6087127, abstract = {Abstract\ \ Methodological reductionists practice 'wannabe reductionism'. They claim that one should pursue reductionism, but never propose how. I integrate two strains in prior work to do so. Three kinds of activities are pursued as ” reductionist”. ” Successional reduction” and inter-level mechanistic explanation are legitimate and powerful strategies. Eliminativism is generally ill-conceived. Specific problem-solving heuristics for constructing inter-level mechanistic explanations show why and when they can provide powerful and fruitful tools and insights, but sometimes lead to erroneous results. I show how traditional metaphysical approaches fail to engage how science is done. The methods used do so, and support a pragmatic and non-eliminativist realism.}, author = {Wimsatt, William}, citeulike-article-id = {6087127}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-006-9017-0}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.springerlink.com/content/t822x80g257372u3}, day = {1}, doi = {10.1007/s11229-006-9017-0}, journal = {Synthese}, keywords = {heuristics, metaphysics, methodology, philosophy, philsci, reduction}, month = {August}, number = {3}, pages = {445--475}, posted-at = {2009-11-09 05:50:13}, priority = {0}, title = {Reductionism and its heuristics: Making methodological reductionism honest}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-006-9017-0}, volume = {151}, year = {2006} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:6087127 L3 - citeulike-article-id:6087127 N2 - Abstract  Methodological reductionists practice ‘wannabe reductionism’. They claim that one should pursue reductionism, but never propose how. I integrate two strains in prior work to do so. Three kinds of activities are pursued as “reductionist”. “Successional reduction” and inter-level mechanistic explanation are legitimate and powerful strategies. Eliminativism is generally ill-conceived. Specific problem-solving heuristics for constructing inter-level mechanistic explanations show why and when they can provide powerful and fruitful tools and insights, but sometimes lead to erroneous results. I show how traditional metaphysical approaches fail to engage how science is done. The methods used do so, and support a pragmatic and non-eliminativist realism. IS - 3 JF - Synthese EP - 475 TI - Reductionism and its heuristics: Making methodological reductionism honest VL - 151 SP - 445 KW - heuristics KW - metaphysics KW - methodology KW - philosophy KW - philsci KW - reduction AU - Wimsatt, William PY - 2006/08/01/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-006-9017-0 ER -