Philosophical Studies Series 121 Raphael van Riel The Concept of Reduction The Concept of Reduction PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES VOLUME 121 Founded by Wilfrid S. Sellars and Keith Lehrer Editor Stephen Hetherington, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Senior Advisory Editor Keith Lehrer, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A. Associate Editor Stewart Cohen, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A. Board of Consulting Editors Lynne Rudder Baker, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, U.S.A. Radu Bogdan, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, U.S.A. Marian David, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, U.S.A. John M. Fischer, University of California, Riverside, CA, U.S.A. Allan Gibbard, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A. Denise Meyerson, Macquarie University, NSW, Australia François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod, EHESS, Paris, France Mark Sainsbury, University of Texas, Austin, TX, U.S.A. Stuart Silvers, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, U.S.A. Barry Smith, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, U.S.A. Nicholas D. Smith, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR, U.S.A. Linda Zagzebski, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, U.S.A. For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/6459 Raphael van Riel The Concept of Reduction 123 Raphael van Riel Institut für Philosophie Universität Duisburg-Essen Essen, Germany ISBN 978-3-319-04161-2 ISBN 978-3-319-04162-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-04162-9 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2014932164 © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) For Katharina Preface This book is a revised version of my doctoral thesis submitted at the Ruhr-University of Bochum in July 2010. The thesis was written under the supervision of Albert Newen and Stephan Hartmann. The core arguments were discussed with my colleagues in Bochum and at the Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS), where I spent a couple of months in 2009 as a visiting fellow. Several papers emerged from this thesis, brief summaries of which are included in the present book. I started working on the manuscript again in 2012, while spending two wonderful months in Barcelona as a visiting fellow in the LOGOS group. First of all, I wish to thank my supervisors Albert Newen and Stephan Hartmann for their helpful comments on the manuscript and the long discussions we had on this topic. I am grateful for their guidance. I would like to thank Markus Werning and Ulrich Pardey, who were on the committee and provided helpful feedback. A somewhat independent ‘thank you’ goes, again, to Albert Newen for his strategic and motivational support as my boss for more than 5 years at the University of Bochum. The time was great. I also wish to thank my former colleagues for helpful discussions, for reading sections of the manuscript, and for providing distraction when needed: Leon de Bruin, Eva Maria Jung, Lena Kästner, Ulrike Pompe, Tobias Schlicht, Tomoo Ueda, Anna Welpinghus, and, especially, Markus Eronen, Christoph Michel, Tobias Starzak, and Gottfried Vosgerau. I had extremely helpful discussions with Alexander Reutlinger, Christian Sachse, Patrice Soom, and Jan Sprenger. I received valuable comments from a group of philosophers at Brown University, and I would like to thank Douglas Kutach for his feedback on a paper that summarized an early version of the core argument of Chap. 3. I would also like to thank Gerhard Schurz for inviting me to his colloquium, where I received extremely valuable comments. I am grateful to Dan López de Sa and Moritz Schulz for inviting me to the PERSP-Metaphysics seminar in Barcelona, where a paper of mine was intensively discussed – a paper significant portions of which later entered Chaps. 3 and 9. Working with Robert Van Gulick on the entry ‘Scientific Reduction’ for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy helped me to get clearer about numerous subtleties of the reduction debate – I wish to thank him for that. I received valuable input during workshops and in colloquia in Lausanne, Milan, vii viii Preface Krakow, Helsinki, Tilburg, and Geneva. I am especially grateful for the intense, often nightlong discussions I had with Heiner Koch, Nick Haverkamp and Miguel Hoeltje, who also read and commented on significant portions of this book. I also wish to thank Daniel James for reading parts of the book and for intense discussions. An anonymous referee provided extremely helpful comments not only on particular sections, but also on the book’s overall structure – in the light of these comments I restructured the entire book; I truly hope the result does justice to the referee’s valuable suggestions, at least to some extent. I would also like to thank the foundations that enabled me to conduct research, stay abroad and travel to conferences: the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and the Mercator Stiftung. The final version of this manuscript was produced with the support of a generous Dilthey-Fellowship of the Volkswagen Foundation. Thanks also to Ties Nijssen and Christi Lue from Springer for their support. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my former teachers at the University of Hamburg, especially Harald Wohlrapp and Wolfgang Künne, and to my family, who encouraged me to pursue a philosophical career, and who enabled me to carry out this project – my parents, Peter and Ulrike, with great affection, my brother and sister, and Hartmut Meißner. My deepest thanks go to my wife, Katharina, for being patient, for always putting things into perspective, and for her encouragement. And thanks to my children – for everything. Essen, Germany Raphael van Riel Contents 1 Introduction ................................................................. 1 1.1 A Puzzle About Reduction ............................................ 3 1.2 A Sketch of a Solution................................................. 3 1.3 A Note on Methodology............................................... 4 1.4 Reduction and Reductionism.......................................... 5 1.5 The Book’s Structure .................................................. 6 Bibliography ................................................................. 8 Part I The Concept of Reduction – An Explication 2 How to Approach Reduction: Explication and Meta-science .......... 11 2.1 Reduction, Elimination, and Monism – A Taxonomy ............... 11 2.1.1 Reductionism and Monism ................................... 12 2.1.2 Two Forms of Eliminativism.................................. 12 2.1.3 Four Types of Monism – The Taxonomy..................... 13 2.1.4 Reduction and Metaphysical Neutrality ...................... 16 2.1.5 Reductionism and Realism.................................... 17 2.1.6 Two Philosophical Challenges: Reduction and Replacement .............................................. 18 2.1.7 Theory Reduction and Ontological Reduction ............... 19 2.2 Ways of Defining Reduction .......................................... 20 2.2.1 Definitions as Stipulations .................................... 21 2.2.2 Empirically Inspired Definitions.............................. 22 2.2.3 Definitions as Explications.................................... 24 2.3 The Concept of Reduction as the Subject of Explication?........... 29 2.4 Terminology ........................................................... 31 2.5 Conclusion ............................................................. 35 Bibliography ................................................................. 35 3 The Puzzle of Reduction ................................................... 39 3.1 The Puzzle ............................................................. 40 3.2 Hyper-intensionality ..................................................