Chapter — 5 — The Reality of Abstractions

A phenomena that does not need be divided into parts to be explicable, is a quasi-autonomous phenomenon. This higher level quasi-autonomous explicable phenomenon is called emergence. Emergent phenomena are very small in nature. This leads to a misconception known as reductionism — science explained by dividing constituents into subparts. While talking about reductionism lets talk about another misconception known as holism, which says that all the valid explanations are those of sub-parts rather than the explanation of whole. All these philosophies are wrong because their criteria of acceptance are not based on good explanations. This is because reductionism would lead to infinite regression of the phenomenon which would lead to either a never ending reduction or a dead-end.

“Whenever a high level explanation follows logically from a low-level ones, that also means high level ones implies something about low-level ones.” If the high-level theories are more consistent they would increase constraints on the low-level ones. It is possible all the high level explanations taken together imply low-level ones and vice versa. “Or it could be that some low-level, some intermediate level and some high-level explanations, taken together imply all explanations.” The problem of fine tuning would be cleared if all the high-level explanations turn out to be exact laws of nature.

Emergent phenomena are responsible for the explicability of the world. Before humans had good explanations, they relied on rules of thumb. Rules of thumb contained explanations about high level phenomena amongst emergent phenomena. Gene encodings also provide us with rules of thumb, which become emergent phenomena. So, in other words, emergence is another beginning of infinity: all knowledge creation depends upon emergent phenomena.

Emergence also tells us that discoveries can be made in successive steps, thus improving the scope of scientific method. This gives rise to layer like phenomena, where each layer is better than the previous one. However, this concept is also wrong because this becomes similar to the problem of reductionism. Scientific explanations are usually dissimilar in how they explain predictions. They employe instrumentalism for their explanations. Every successive theory makes better predictions than its predecessor theory. However, new theories might even rule out what the previous theories predicted, if the old theories were not right in the first place. Also, we must not forget that it is the explanations of theories which matter, not their predictions. This is the most important aspect to understand in order to make progress in any field.

Almost all rejected theories are discarded for being bad explanations rather than having been tested to be proven wrong. Experimentation is only one of the many methods in science used for criticism. Experimentation does play a role in philosophy, as it provides us with philosophical problems. However it is the explanations which determine sustainability of any philosophy. Philosophy of science would have been non-existent, if the process of acquiring knowledge about the physical world were unproblematic. This is because it is the problems that make us look back into phenomena we take to describe our world and correct the misconceptions and build better theories.

If we talk about moral philosophy, misconceptions regarding empiricism and justificationism are expressed with a saying from David Hume: “you can’t derive an ought from an is.” This means that moral theories cannot be derived from factual knowledge. Two options seem plausible in it: (a) embrace the unreason or (b) live without making a moral judgement. However, both of these options are wrong and can lead to wrong moral decisions.

We cannot derive an ought from an is, that we have seen above. We also can’t derive a factual theory from is either. The growth of knowledge is not about finding justifications about ones beliefs. It is about finding truth via good explanations. Factual evidence and and moral maxims are logically independent but factual and moral explanations are not. So factual knowledge can be used to criticize moral explanations.