"It turns out that understanding genes or neurons, which each form vast networks of adaptive interconnected units, cannot be directly extrapolated to improving our understanding of human behaviour and disorder. This is a limit of the reductionist approach; it cannot penetrate the transition between complex interactions at one level through to the emergent big picture phenomena at the next."
Hmm. Isn't this a matter of the sheer complexity rather than the reductionist approach itself? We sure have been naive and presupposed that understanding individual or small groups of neurons well will give us a good understanding of the mind. But it seems to me that the problems, rather than reductionism itself, are more like:
1. we're still in a very early stage of understanding the larger structures, where the details really matter. But yes, most people in the 70's probably hoped that it would pretty much be sorted out by now.
2. Even if we had a complete description of the brain stored in a supercomputer or something, the complexity and transitions from low-level to high-level phenomena are probably not graspable for human minds in the same way as the standard model -> cell behaviour is (even though we only have simple internal models of that).
So, the main problem, as I see it, is that we do not have the right data, nor the right mental capacities to understand psychology in a reductionist fashion. And perhaps we never will.
Personally, I believe people like Dennett have figured out the core principles of the mind to a high degree, and he wouldn't have done so without neuroscience.
Hi Mark - I'm not sure if we're agreeing or disagreeing! What I'm saying is that reductionism can't help us understand complexity, which is what I think you're saying too?
Are you also suggesting that understanding ourselves presents additional challenges over and above those we have trying to understand anything else?
I think I'm mostly in agreement with you, but I do have some sympathy for reductionism when analysing cell behaviour for example. The same goes for psychology, only it's much harder and we're in an earlier stage and so forth.
When it comes to understanding oneself from the first person, yes, I think there's an extra layer of difficulty. But not third person analysis of humans.
The more complex systems are (and the less do the reductionist account we have figured out) the more we must rely on high-level concepts.
Hi Saj!
"It turns out that understanding genes or neurons, which each form vast networks of adaptive interconnected units, cannot be directly extrapolated to improving our understanding of human behaviour and disorder. This is a limit of the reductionist approach; it cannot penetrate the transition between complex interactions at one level through to the emergent big picture phenomena at the next."
Hmm. Isn't this a matter of the sheer complexity rather than the reductionist approach itself? We sure have been naive and presupposed that understanding individual or small groups of neurons well will give us a good understanding of the mind. But it seems to me that the problems, rather than reductionism itself, are more like:
1. we're still in a very early stage of understanding the larger structures, where the details really matter. But yes, most people in the 70's probably hoped that it would pretty much be sorted out by now.
2. Even if we had a complete description of the brain stored in a supercomputer or something, the complexity and transitions from low-level to high-level phenomena are probably not graspable for human minds in the same way as the standard model -> cell behaviour is (even though we only have simple internal models of that).
So, the main problem, as I see it, is that we do not have the right data, nor the right mental capacities to understand psychology in a reductionist fashion. And perhaps we never will.
Personally, I believe people like Dennett have figured out the core principles of the mind to a high degree, and he wouldn't have done so without neuroscience.
Hi Mark - I'm not sure if we're agreeing or disagreeing! What I'm saying is that reductionism can't help us understand complexity, which is what I think you're saying too?
Are you also suggesting that understanding ourselves presents additional challenges over and above those we have trying to understand anything else?
I think I'm mostly in agreement with you, but I do have some sympathy for reductionism when analysing cell behaviour for example. The same goes for psychology, only it's much harder and we're in an earlier stage and so forth.
When it comes to understanding oneself from the first person, yes, I think there's an extra layer of difficulty. But not third person analysis of humans.
The more complex systems are (and the less do the reductionist account we have figured out) the more we must rely on high-level concepts.
I think we agree.
This is an impressive opening article! I enjoyed reading it and will now enjoy thinking about it for the rest of the year. Damn you Sir!