To try to not be reductionist

[PepperBlossoms]

I am realizing it is hard to discuss anything without being in some way reductionist - one can try to be as holistic as possible but it will still be a form of reductionism as we aren't aware of the whole as we are always learning more and more things.

It can be nice to take something and put it into nice organized boxes but to even put it in a box - there are many ways to do that and where the box boundaries go

How does one try to not be reductionist?  To basically say, here are some ways of seeing something but there are also other ways too.

[Mason Riggle]

Reductionism is also described as an intellectual and philosophical position that interprets a complex system as the sum of its parts.  I don't see a problem with this, and it seems consistent with Holism.  

The challenge is recognizing the arbitrary relativity of boundaries.  My hand is made up of 5 digits, but it's only 1 hand.. is my hand 1 thing or 5 things? Is it both? Neither?    How long must a knife be before it's a sword? How tall does a chair have to be before it's a stool? Where is the 'edge' between the atmosphere and space? How far down my arm does my wrist extend? 

Edited September 29, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[LastThursday]

2 hours ago, Mason Riggle said:

that interprets a complex system as the sum of its parts

And those parts are simpler than the whole, that's the reason for reductionism, to make things simpler to understand. 

Another way to understand a complex system is to interact with it, learn its behaviour. For example to understand @LastThursday, you don't take his limbs apart and reduce him, instead you talk to him and observe him. Or you might also go in the other direction and see how @LastThursday fits in within the larger system of the forum.

Another way to see things, is to see how they are similar to other things. For example to understand person, you can make assumptions about what has been learned from studying other people: men will be men, @LastThursday is a man, for example.

Edited September 29, 2021 by LastThursday

[Carl-Richard]

A holistic thinker knows the limitations of reductionism, but he doesn't deny its utility. Therefore, to exclude reductionism at all costs is firstly impossible and secondly anti-thetical to holism.

[DocWatts]

Reductionism is not a problem as long as it's being applied knowingly and for a specific purpose.

After all, all Models of any kind make use of reductionism to tease apart anything qualitatively significant about whatever data is fed in to it.

The problem only comes when one starts mistaking the map for the territory, conflating their reductionist models for the substance of reality (and of course denying that they are being Reductionist).

When one forgets that the conceptual Models we depend upon are abstractions we project out in to the world (rather than something that exists independently of our Minds) is when Reductionism becomes problematic.

Edited September 29, 2021 by DocWatts

[Gesundheit2]

Reductionism is good; it's the best, actually.

Nuance is costy and exhausting, and it leads to all sorts of executive malfunctions.

All arguments against that are stupid, also.

[Jacob Morres]

10 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

Reductionism is good; it's the best, actually.

Nuance is costy and exhausting, and it leads to all sorts of executive malfunctions.

All arguments against that are stupid, also.

balance