Reduktion und Elimination in Philosophie und den Wissenschaften Reduction and Elimination in Philosophy and the Sciences Abstracts 31. Internationales Wittgenstein Symposium 10. – 16. August 2008 Kirchberg am Wechsel 31st International Wittgenstein Symposium August 10 – 16, 2008 Kirchberg am Wechsel Distributors Die Österreichische Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society Markt 63, A-2880 Kirchberg am Wechsel Österreich/Austria Gedruckt mit Unterstützung der Abteilung Kultur und Wissenschaft des Amtes der NÖ Landesregierung Herausgeber: Alexander Hieke, Hannes Leitgeb Visuelle Gestaltung: Sascha Windholz Druck: Eigner-Druck, 3040 Neulengbach 2 FORMAL MECHANISMS FOR REDUCTION THE DATE OF TRACTATUS BEGINNING IN SCIENCE Luciano Bazzocchi, Pisa, Italy Terje Aaberge, Sogndal, Norway The question of Tractatus dating can be resolved through The paper presents a formal way of looking at the a historical-critical analysis of the Prototractatus notebook. reduction in science by exhibiting among others the cases McGuinness’ reasons to poke the first part of Proto- of Newtonian and Hamiltonian formulations of Classical tractatus compilation between MS102 and MS103 mechanics. The cases are discussed in a framework con- notebooks, i.e. between June 1915 and March 1916, are sidering a scientific theory as consisting of the not convincing; nevertheless, his dating suggestion is more juxtaposition of two languages, the object language used realistic than, for instance, Geschkowski’s last counter- to express empirical statement about systems and the proposal. In the 1915 diary, indeed, there is a passage that property language used to express statements about the with all evidence points to Prototractatus page 12. So I properties of systems. Both of these languages are ideally suggest emphasizing (and modifying) McGuinness’ based on the syntax of first order predicate logic and suggestion in this way: the starting pages of the Ab- endowed with a semantic structure expressed by handlung do precede, and don’t follow, MS102 last entries. ontologies. In this framework the notion of reduction can This could definitively change the critics’ approach to be referred to the axiom system constituting the core of the Wittgenstein’s wartime diaries. ontologies. Reduction corresponds to the extension of the axiom system and thus of the ontology. The reason is that the ontology then contains more contextual knowledge and less data is needed to describe a system. ANALYZING CONCEPTS AND DEFINING PROPERTIES George Bealer, Yale, USA WITTGENSTEIN ON COUNTING IN POLITICAL ECONOMY The paper begins with reflections on the identity conditions of concepts and properties. These reflections suggest a Sonja M. Amadae, Columbus, USA novel approach to the paradox of analysis and, in turn, an account of conceptual analysis and the definition of Philosophers are … interested in matters of normativity: properties. What is it for person A to be obligated to do action B? What do we mean when we say that one ought to do something, like give to a charity? Mathematics and mathe- matical logic provide at least one important and, possibly simple, case. Logic is normative if anything is. In what REDUCTION DOESN’T ELIMINATE THE sense are we required to follow the canons of correct NEED FOR HIGHER-LEVEL RESEARCH: reasoning when doing mathematics? (Stewart Shapiro, Thinking About Mathematics (Oxford University Press, CIRCADIAN RHYTHM RESEARCH AS AN 2000), 5.) EXEMPLAR William Bechtel/Adele Abrahamsen, San Diego, USA Success in reductionistic research in cognitive science or ALTERNATIVE REDUCTIONS FOR biology is often portrayed as eliminating any need for independent explanations at higher levels. On the standard DYNAMIC DEONTIC LOGICS philosophical account, successful reduction of a higher Albert J.J. Anglberger, Salzburg, Austria level science means that its laws can be derived from those of a lower level science and hence perform no explanatory work of their own. But this misrepresents what One more recent approach to deontic logic – the logic of successful reductionistic inquiry promises or can deliver. At permission, obligation and prohibition – places deontic least in the life sciences (including cognitive science), the logic into a dynamic framework. In dynamic logics we usual focus of reductionistic inquiry is not the discovery of differentiate between actions and assertions. For every laws at a lower level than some law of initial interest. action term an execution operator '[α] …' is introduced, Instead, investigators begin with a phenomenon and which is read as 'every execution of leads to a state in general idea of the mechanism responsible for it and seek which … holds'. Enriching our language by a violation to discover its component parts and operations and how constant V allows us to reduce deontic predicates in two they work together. The focus of actual reductionistic obvious ways: (i) An action is forbidden iff every execution inquiry is the decomposition of mechanisms, not the leads to a violation (ii) an action is forbidden iff at least one derivation of laws, and the desire to understand scientific execution leads to a violation. Both reductions lead – inquiry in this way has led some of us to propose and besides being somewhat coarse grained – to implausible develop a new mechanistic philosophy of science. theorems. In our talk we will address the question where and how one may find more sophisticated reductions. Building this new approach has required a variety of case studies of scientific inquiry. Our own most recent case is research on the circadian rhythms exhibited in numerous behaviors and physiological functions. Researchers have had considerable success with the most basic reductionistic task in this field: identifying the parts within organisms that are important to the generation of the rhythms. In mammals, it has been found that many 3 individual neurons in the suprachiasmatic nucleus function nominalist), but the nature of this unity cannot and is not to as clocks, and that key components include genes such as be further explained. Period (Per) and Cryptochrome (Cry) and the proteins PER and CRY into which they are translated. Moreover, some key operations performed by these parts are known: PER and CRY form a compound (dimer) which is transported into the nucleus and inhibits Per and Cry, THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF NATURAL hence reducing the rate of production of further molecules of PER and CRY. Reductionistic research in the last 15 KINDS years has succeeded in identifying these and many other Alexander Bird, Bristol, UK parts of the clockworks. Such inquiry, no matter how successful it is in finding I examine the possible views concerning the ontological the parts and characterizing the operations they perform, status of natural kinds and the whether any kind of does not suffice to explain circadian phenomena. The elimination or reduction is feasible. I suggest that no kind operations performed by the parts in individual cells are of ontological elimination is consistent with essentialism, organized and orchestrated such that the cell functions as but essentialism may permit the limited reductionism of the a unit – one that displays complex temporal dynamics. homeostatic property cluster approach. Moreover, there are operations between SCN cells that synchronize their oscillations and between SCN cells and the receptors responsive to environmental cues that entrain the clock to the local time and between SCN cells and the many bodily organs that exhibit circadian behavior. WITTGENSTEIN’S EXTERNALISM – Finally, there are operations connecting the organism to the environment, especially to sources of light and GETTING SEMANTIC EXTERNALISM temperature. None of these operations at higher levels are THROUGH THE PRIVATE LANGUAGE discovered by focusing on the operations involving genes ARGUMENT AND THE RULE-FOLLOWING and proteins inside SCN cells—they require tools and CONSIDERATIONS techniques appropriate to the level at which the operations are occurring. Cristina Borgoni, Granada, Spain An especially challenging part of inquiry in the life sciences involves relating parts and operations at different It is widely accepted that Wittgenstein’s position in levels. Within the mechanistic framework, these are best Philosophical Investigations is in great agreement with handled not by invoking notions such as top-down or semantic externalism. However, the way his position is bottom-up causation, but by understanding the constitutive related to it is neither explicit nor is itself a standard relation between a mechanism and its component parts reference. The aim of this work is to show that the Private and operations. When the mechanism is affected by Language Argument and the Rule-Following consid- operations impinging on it, so are some of its components. erations are sufficient arguments to defend an externalist Conversely, when some of its components are changed by position. Two routes will be offered that will lead us from being operated on by other components, the mechanism those arguments to externalism. as a whole and the operations in which it engages are changed. The ontological picture, as exemplified in modern biology, is one in which the capacity of mechanisms to operate in their environments is explained at lower levels but the mechanisms (as wholes) interact causally with INTENTIONALITY, INFORMATION, AND other mechanisms at higher levels. This picture iterates as EXPERIENCE one goes to even lower levels by