Article ID: CBB000933696

Nagel's Analysis of Reduction: Comments in Defense as Well as Critique (2010)

unapi

Despite all the criticism showered on Nagel's classic account of reduction, it meets a fundamental desideratum in an analysis of reduction that is difficult to question, namely of providing for a proper identification of the reducing theory. This is not clearly accommodated in radically different accounts. However, the same feature leads me to question Nagel's claim that the reducing theory can be separated from the putative bridge laws, and thus to question his notion of heterogeneous reduction. A further corollary to the requirement that all the necessary conditions be incorporated in an adequate formulation of the putative reducing theory is that the standard example of gas temperature is not reducible to average molecular kinetic energy. As originally conceived, Nagel's conception of reduction takes no account of approximate reasoning and this failure has certainly restricted its applicability, perhaps to the point of making it unrealistic as a model of reduction in science. I suggest approximation can be accommodated by weakening the original requirement of deduction without jeopardizing the fundamental desideratum. Finally, I turn to briefly consider the idea sometimes raised of the ontological reducibility of chemistry.

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Authors & Contributors
Riccardo Mona
Borg, George
Ceulemans, Arnout
Thyssen, Pieter
Thomas, Gerald F.
Tagliagambe, Silvano
Concepts
Philosophy of science
Reductionism
Chemistry
Physics
Models and modeling in science
Quantum mechanics
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
20th century, late
19th century
Places
Hungary
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