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Oh no! Am I a reductionist??

On the most informative levels of analysis for any given problem

Figs in Winter
9 min readJul 1, 2024
Fields of study arranged by purity, according to the excellent xkcd.com.

Sometimes I think my career suffers from a kind of split personality disorder. For instance, as a scientist I tend to point out to my colleagues in philosophy that to say “that’s an empirical question” is a good thing, not a conversation stopper. Then again, I also find myself reminding my science colleagues that no matter how hard they try to ignore it, everything they do has philosophical underpinnings, including in terms of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

Or consider the fact that I often argue, again with my science colleagues, that scientism — an attitude of pretty much unquestionable worship of science — is not a good thing. I ever co-edited a book about it! And yet, I turn around and I find myself accused of, you guessed it, scientism!, by a number of my philosophy colleagues (not to mention creationists, mysticists, and other assorted pseudo-thinkers).

I try to console myself that I must be doing something right if I manage to piss off both sides of frequently acrimonious debates, but I don’t know, maybe I’m just engaging in rationalizing wishful thinking.

Lately I’ve been able to add a third issue about which I seem to behave like an epistemic version of Schrödinger’s cat: I may or may not agree…

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Figs in Winter
Figs in Winter

Written by Figs in Winter

by Massimo Pigliucci, a scientist, philosopher, and Professor at the City College of New York. Exploring and practicing Stoicism & other philosophies of life.

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