Tag: science

There has been much discussion of whether the mental can be reduced to the physical, where this is understood as requiring more than the mere truth of materialism. Jerry Fodor (chapter 18) argues that in general, one cannot expect that the theories of a high-level “special science” should be reducible to the theories of a low-level science such as physics. Because of the many ways in which a high-level kind can be realized at a low level, the general principles in a high-level science cannot be captured by a low-level science except in a very complex and arbitrary way. This applies especially to the science of psychology, suggesting that one cannot expect that psychology can be reducible to physics, or even to neuroscience. Instead, it will always have a degree of autonomy.