On the Twin Nuisances of Scientism and "Postmodernism"

Scientism and "postmodernism" are mirror images of one another. The former vulgarizes reason, while the latter insults it. The former hypocritically denies its underlying absurdity, while the latter proudly embraces it. The former calls philosophy nonsense, while the latter calls nonsense philosophy. In other words, they are both pseudo-intellectual gimmicks that constitute a profoundly false, pseudo-intellectual dichotomy. And as with other ideological charades of this kind, you need good old classical rationalism, logic, and common sense to see through it.

A Short Note on the Illusion of Progress

Humankind continues to be as superstitious as it has always been. Religiously inspired superstition gave way to scientifically inspired superstition. One irrational doctrine - uncritical fideism - gave way to another irrational doctrine - technocratic scientism. The belief in the divine right of kings was replaced by the belief in the legitimate paternalism of bureaucratic "experts".

In fact, things got worse on this front - the modern superstition is even more irrational than the old one. One can treat seriously the argument that you owe obedience to the supreme being who endowed you with free will and reason, since you literally owe that being your status as a free agent. By the same token, it is possible to treat seriously the claim that you owe obedience to the direct representatives of such a being. But how can one treat seriously the claim that some human beings owe their status of free agents, and thus obedience, to other human beings, none of which enjoys any special divine imprimatur?

In any event, the common denominator of old and new superstitions is clear - it is statism, the belief in the salutary influence of centralized violence, aggression and coercion. If humankind is ever to grow into intellectual and moral maturity, it has to disabuse itself of this belief first and foremost.

Irreducible Holism

In this paper I would like to explore some issues surrounding ontological reduction, as advocated by the friends of physicalism, and its relation to conceptual reduction, which the said persons generally seem to eschew. It is my intention, and my hope, that the remarks contained herein will shed some new light on those scientific and philosophical programmes that include ontological reduction as one of their foundational assumptions. More specifically, I want to hint at certain general methodological and ethical implications of the research projects (both in the natural sciences and in the philosophy of mind) that aspire to explain the nature of complex phenomena within a physicalist setting, and offer their brief analysis.

Furthermore, I am going to argue against the feasibility of an all-reaching physicalist framework for accomplishing the abovementioned task by attempting to show that a certain set of concepts bridges the ostensible gap between ontological and conceptual reduction; these concepts, which I shall call „irreducibly holistic‟, appear to me to be unamenable to a physicalist treatment in which the metaphysical and semantic components are supposed to be clearly separable. Within the ambit of irreducible holism, as I shall argue, ontological and conceptual reduction are inextricably bound together, hence if the latter is impossible, then so is the former; and since I take irreducibly holistic concepts to be insusceptible to conceptual reduction, physicalism with respect to them (and thus physicalism per se) turns out to be untenable.

[Read More]