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Full Idea
We should accept levels of organisation, levels of complexity, levels of description, and levels of explanation, but not the levels of reality favoured by many anti-reductionists. The world is then ontologically, but not analytically, reductive.
Gist of Idea
There are levels of organisation, complexity, description and explanation, but not of reality
Source
John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro)
Book Ref
Heil,John: 'From an Ontological Point of View' [OUP 2005], p.10
A Reaction
This sounds right to me. The crunch questions seem to be whether the boundaries at higher levels of organisation exist lower down, and whether the causal laws of the higher levels can be translated without remainder into lower level laws.
5311 | If observation goes up a level, we expect the laws of the lower level to remain in force [Wilson,EO] |
6534 | One location may contain molecules, a metal strip, a key, an opener of doors, and a human tragedy [Lycan] |
5500 | Biologists see many organic levels, 'abstract' if seen from below, 'structural' if seen from above [Lycan] |
7003 | There are levels of organisation, complexity, description and explanation, but not of reality [Heil] |
4616 | A higher level is 'supervenient' if it is determined by lower levels, but has its own natural laws [Heil] |
16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |