Best Arguments for Physicalism
This is a survey thread. Whether you're a physicalist or not, what do you think the best arguments for it are? If you are a physicalist, what convinced you? Or is it just the grounding of your thinking?
Quick definition of physicalism:
Quoting SEP
Quick definition of physicalism:
Quoting SEP
Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don't deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don't seem physical — items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are either physical or supervene on the physical.
Comments (1044)
I think what he's been implying but not saying directly is that when he "judges something as evidence", it might not really be evidence. Like, to him, it's only REALLY evidence if the thing it's evidence for is also true. It can be judged as evidence, but only mistakenly, if it's not true.
But to everyone else, there's no difference between judging something as evidence, and evidence. Those mean the same thing.
Like, if you say "I believe X" and I say "why? What's your evidence?" you might say "my evidence is this this and this, but I'm still not certain" while his vocabulary would force him to say "I have judged this this and this to be evidence, but I'm still not certain". Nobody else needs to add the word "judged" in there, it's already implicit.
Perhaps another way to phrase it is, for him, "evidence" can only be objective (evidence can only be objectively true signs of objectively true facts), so if he wants to talk about subjective reasons for believing something, he has to add the word "judged" in to subjectivify it. But to everyone else, "evidence" already has that subjective nature implied.
And of course it already has subjectivity baked in. Objective truths don't care about objective evidence, evidence is how imperfect human beings share ideas about their uncertain beliefs. The only reason "evidence" is a word at all is because it's useful in cases where humans are sharing their judgements about their uncertainties, and to convince other people of their conclusions. We don't need to add words to subjectivify "evidence", it's baked in.
Courts say 'present your evidence', not 'present what you have judged to be evidence'. To native English speakers, "what you have judged to be" is redundant.
Assuming I’ve understood what you mean, and from the perspective of critical thought, I’m not sure how much sense it makes to grant compatibility to opposing judgements. I think the approaching object is John, judgement A, has nothing to do with judgement B, ……but my eyes ain’t so good no more. A relates a perception to a representation through experience, re: John, but B relates to a representation to its relative quality, so while both relate to the same representation, they don’t relate to each other. Dunno how compatibility has anything to do with it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This incidental evidence relates to your eyes, not to the approaching object. The former is a judgement with respect to the quality of a given representation, the latter is a judgement with respect to the validity of it. The former is contingent in accordance with physiology, the latter necessary in accordance with rules.
So what judgement call are you actually hesitant in making? That the approaching object is John? Haven’t you tacitly made that call already, by not thinking it is any particular object at all, insofar as your proposition makes no mention of what you think the approaching object may or may not be? In effect, you’ve thought it unjustifiable to name the approaching object, which your proposition in fact represents. Another way to say you’re hesitant in making a judgement call, is to say you just don’t know. Which is fine, of course.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I understand and can accept most of that, with the exception of suspending judgement. From the perspective of critical thought, to think is to judge, from which follows suspension of judgement is impossible.
Anyway….not much more I can add here.
Yes, a topic I am quite interested in. It would be a good thread topic I think.
Go there! It's more interesting than most stuff on here currently.
The parts of the experience that might lead you to think John is approaching
are hard to consider evidence that John is not approaching.
But in in a situation where you are not sure John is approaching, but you think he is, the overall experience you are having contains evidence that he is not approaching. There is something about the entire experience that leads to doubt.
If there was nothing about the experience, nothing at all, that gave any indication this might not be John, well, that's a different situation.
So, there must be elements of the experience that FIT with it not being John approaching.
(and for what it's worth, it seems to me FJ has been fairly patiently trying to get his point across and felt it was important that you come up with the scenario and also that the scenario had specific features. I certainly could have missed things, but it seemed like your reactions included some negative assumptions about his attitudes and intentions which did not help the discussion. )
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, I brought up young earth creationism as an example of science denialism, not to say that you have the same view as a YEC. There are all sorts of science denialism, such as AGW denialism.
It seems that you are avoiding looking at, whether the following statement of yours is indicative of science denialism.
Quoting Wayfarer
I was hoping you would start the thread. :wink:
I'm better at riffing off things others have said. It's not clear to me how I would start such an OP without it becoming much too long and meandering.
The judgement I was speaking of was whether or not the approaching object is John. But I think I see your point, this implies that I've already judged that it is a person, and for some reason, or reasons, I've singled out John as the person it may be. This would be what is at issue, the reason why I've decided it may be John, because this would be the "evidence " which I am considering, what justifies naming the approaching object with that name.
So the situation is, that the name "John" has come to my mind as possibly the correct name for the thing I already have judged as an approaching person. And "John" I associate with a particular individual whom I am acquainted with. Since the name "John" has come to my mind, and is the name I am considering, I ought to conclude that there is some thing, or things, which I have already judged as evidence of John. We have distinguished two types of evidence, direct evidence, as the consideration of the visual image, and the indirect, incidental, as things like the quality of my visual capacity, and the fact that I am expecting John.
It appears to me, like as @Michael pointed out, the incidental evidence is actually much stronger than the direct empirical evidence. The direct evidence in this case relies on making an association between the immediate visual image, and the memory. But this association must be allowed to be overruled by the incidental evidence. This means that direct, immediate, empirical evidence is at a low level in the scale of reliability. Incidental evidence, prior knowledge, like knowledge about the fallibility of the senses and memory, and in this case knowledge about John's habits and intentions, must be allowed to overrule direct empirical evidence.
In relation to arguments for "Physicalism", I would say that this is strong evidence against physicalism. Physicalism is mostly supported by the idea that direct empirical evidence is the most reliable. However, it is now quite clear that direct empirical evidence places very low on the scale of reliability. We must allow that logical arguments based in prior knowledge are far more reliable as evidence for or against physicalism. And the logical arguments which have stood the test of time are mostly against physicalism.
Quoting Mww
I think that the exact relation between thinking and judgement is a very difficult issue. And, depending on how one would define each, both being somewhat ambiguous in general use, would dictate the relationship established. But if "judgement" occurs on a multitude of different levels, then some thinking would be prior to some judgements and posterior to other judgements. Any way, if you feel inclined, I'd like to see the principles from which you draw that conclusion: " From the perspective of critical thought, to think is to judge, from which follows suspension of judgement is impossible."
Quoting Bylaw
The simple claim "the experience is compatible" is simply meaningless without clarification. Experience is meaningless without some sort of interpretation of it, and this would require a description in words, or at least some form of association. How we choose the words, such as "John" in the example, as a form of association, is a form of judgement. So talking about "experience" without judgement makes no sense. There is judgement inherent within any sort of reflection on experience.
Quoting Bylaw
As Mww has (I believe) accurately described above, these different judgements are completely distinct judgements. "The thing looks like John", and "my eyes are faulty" are not necessarily related at all. Even distinct judgements of the visual impression itself are not necessarily related. "The coat looks like John's", "The type of walk does not look like John's", for example. Without the question "is that John", the individual parts of the sensual experience are unrelated, "red coat", "favours the right leg". Then, upon the question "is that John", the incidental evidence also becomes very important, "I am expecting John", "my eyes are bad so the visual sense experience is not reliable", etc., are now very important aspects of the overall experience.
The doubt, is dependent on how the various distinct judgements, direct empirical, and the indirect incidental, which are all part of the overall "experience", are related to each other. So, we must apply a further formula, or system of judgement to classify the distinct judgements as reliable and unreliable. And, as I showed above, direct empirical judgement needs to be be classed as low on the level of reliability.
Quoting Bylaw
FJ refused to separate different judgements which are very clearly distinct, as Mww shows. "That coat looks like John's coat", "my eyes are not very good", and "I am expecting John at this time", are all very distinct, and fundamentally unrelated judgements. FJ refused to separate these very distinct judgements, conflating them as one self-contradicting judgement. That is what my scenario shows, that FJ conflated very distinct judgements into what was claimed by FJ to be one judgement, which was demonstrably a self-contradicting judgement if it was actually one judgement.
Oh absolutely. Definitions, relationships and whatnot are generally predicated on a specific theory, and that theory establishes an understanding for how all that stuff works together as a system. Still worthwhile to bear in mind the talking about the system is to reify its components, the cardinal sin of proper metaphysicals itself on the one hand, but necessary for metaphysical discourse on the other. So we’re screwed from the get-go, with regard to obtaining sufficient agreement on much of anything.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Pretty much, yeah, under the assumption physicalism is the be-all, end-all of whatever one can think of. Which seems self-contradictory from the start, insofar as thinking quite literally is a non-physical activity. So….screwed again.
Because you're not getting the distinction between an empirical theory and a metaphysical stance.
I'm afraid that a lot of time spent in these sorts of dicussions has taught me to interpret statements like that as you sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, "La, la, la, I can't hear you!"
Quoting wonderer1
It's taught me that you have little insight into or knowledge of the subject matter of this forum.
Is that what non physicalist generally believe? That there's no possible test or experimental data to demonstrate non physical phenomena?
The reality of non-physical actuality is demonstrated by logic, and the logic proceeds from premises derived from physical activity. The aspects of physical activity which lead to the conclusion of the non-physical cannot be understood by "physics", so the non-physicalist concludes that these aspects of reality can be approached through other processes of understanding, metaphysical principle which allow for the reality of the non-physical.
The physicalist metaphysics however, renders these aspects of reality as fundamentally unintelligible. So for example, we have everything within the realm of science which gets designated as "random" (random mutations of genes and abiogenesis, random fluctuations of quantum fields and symmetry-breaking), being rendered as fundamentally unintelligible by physicalism, whereas the non-physicalist would argue that such things are actually intelligible, if approached through non-physicalist premises.
This is good and I agree, in principle. Might I suggest one small change, re:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Insofar as the perspective is from logic alone rather than typically scientific experimentation, just seems fewer eyebrows would raise just before requiring you to prove the reality of, e.g., the abstract objects or ideas that ground principles a priori.
Just sayin’…..
That is the heart of the issue. With logic, we might demonstrate the "validity" of the non-physical, but if the logic is sound, it would also demonstrate the truth or "reality" of the non-physical. The physicalist would argue that valid logic does nothing to prove the non-physical because so much logic proceeds from fictitious, fantasy, or imaginary premises, and such is the claim to a priori.
The task of metaphysicians then, is to ground the a priori in sound principles. Sound principles are derived from the way that we "experience" reality. Principles consistent with experience are considered to be sound. Now "experience" must be allowed to extend beyond simple sense observation (the trap that empiricism gets looked into), to include the inner most experiences of being, as phenomenology does for example. In this way the metaphysician brings the validity of the arguments for the non-physical into the position of being sound as well. We just need to escape the empiricist trap, which is a metaphysical belief that sound principles of "experience" can only be provided by sense observation.
And if the physicalist argues that all experience is simply a response to sense stimuli this is demonstrably false.
While I might agree with the notion of escaping the empiricist trap, I’d still ask whether a pure empiricist could have a metaphysical belief. At least from Hume, even the suggestion of metaphysical constructs of any kind are considered either absurd, impossible, or merely reckless.
Any supernatural event or miracle could be explained by physicalism in the guise of simulation theory. Maybe if there were messages hidden in Pi from God, it would count against physicalism. The one data point that I think defeats physicalism (or makes it very unlikely), is the fact that I'm conscious. Physicalism cannot explain that and most likely never will.
Can you provide any reason to think that you aren't making an argument from ignorance?
If there was progress to be made explaining consciousness, science would have made it by now. There are also reductio absurdums at play. Bernardo Kastrup talks about one of them here: https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2023/01/ai-wont-be-conscious-and-here-is-why.html
What theory of consciousness do you subscribe to?
This just shows your ignorance of the technological challenges in the way of gaining detailed information about neurological processes. So it doesn't do anything to dispel my impression, that all you have is an argument from ignorance.
https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/current/thought-leadership/2023/10/consciousness-why-a-leading-theory-has-been-branded-pseudoscience
I expect more of this in the future. Physicalist explanations of consciousness are all pseudoscience. It just hasn't sunk in yet.
To support my claim, I will reframe the problem of consciousness in the way I see it. The problem is to explain how qualia interact with non-qualia in a way that reflects its qualitative content. For example, why do aversive qualia (e.g. suffering) cause aversive physical reactions?
There are three possible solutions. One is to explain away qualia, as illusionists do. Another is to explaim away non-qualia, as idealists do. The third is to explain the bridge between qualia and non-qualia, as most people try to do (e.g. dual-aspect monists, panpsychists, orchestrated objective reduction theorists, information integration theorists).
For lack of a better alternative, I am drawn towards illusionism, which sees qualia as cognitive illusions. We are all in fact philosophical zombies, but our cognitive apparatuses couldn't possibly believe that on an intuitive level. Qualia are just our cognitive judgments about ourselves and the world around us. I find the arguments in Dennett's work elucidating in this aspect, although they are not decisive (cf. "Quining qualia" and "Time and the observer").
If the physicalist/materialist has to make this move to salvage their ontology, they've lost the game.
The entire field of consciousness is pseudoscience. At best it's folk psychology; at worst it's superstition. I wager that physicalist explanations will come to this conclusion before non-physicalist ones.
It is too soon for anyone to be justified in calling something a scientific theory of consciousness.
However, speculation plays an important part in how scientific understanding develops.
So while in my opinion the IIT crew is being pretentious in calling IIT a theory, I wouldn't call it pseuoscience, so much as speculative hypothesizing that serves a useful role in science.
But you haven't responded to the issue of you making arguments from ignorance. Why do you consider yourself competent to judge what the state of science should be at present? Surely it is not a matter of you considering yourself scientifically well informed. Right?
As with most age-old philosophical questions, any answer to the problem of consciousness will be deeply counter-intuitive; otherwise, it wouldn't have resisted solution for so long.
For reasons we could debate, idealism, dualism, panpsychism, emergentism, and non-reductive physicalism all face serious issues in connecting qualia to the functional properties of physical objects.
Illusionism is deeply counter-intuitive in that it explains away what seems to be the most given; but that is not to be rejected apriori, but only upon theoretical and empirical reflection. There might be conceptual and empirical reason to think that qualia are incoherent posits. Here is an argument outline.
Our ability to perform conscious judgments are strongly connected to our brain processes. What happens to our brain affects our attention, object detection, object identification, object tracking, pattern detection, similarity judgment, distance judgment, duration perception, proprioception, and so on.
This is evidenced by perceptual impairments caused by brain damage, such as hemispatial neglect (seeing but ignoring objects without noticing), cortical blindness (unconscious seeing), visual anosognosia (denial of blindness), prosopagnosia (no detection of faces), akinetopsia (no detection of motion), mixed transcortical aphasia (where a person can sing but not talk), and the effects of psychedelics in perception, proprioception, ego fragmentation, and ego dissolution. The work of Oliver Sacks and the work of V. S. Ramachandran are very interesting in this regard.
From the above, some conclude that qualia are just brain processes (reductive physicalists), where others conclude that they are caused by brain processes (non-reductive physicalists, dualists), and still others believe that they partially constitute brain processes (panpsychists, dual-aspect monists, idealists). Either way, we must accept that the mind and the brain are deeply connected.
Having said so, here are some direct motivations for illusionism.
1. Consciousness seems unified, but it is not. Our brain processes are temporally and spatially distributed. There is no tiny interval in spacetime where our brain perceptual judgments coalesce so as to possibly form a unified conscious state. I like Dennett's multiple drafts hypothesis on this regard, which receives empirical support in his paper "Time and the observer" (cf. color phi phenomenon, cutaneous rabbit pheomenon). There is also something to say about the unity of consciousness when reflecting on split-brain patients; more on this in the succeeding item.
2. Our access to conscious states seems infallible, but it is not. Access to conscious states requires a physical process connecting qualia to memory, action, and speech, but such a physical connection coud aways fail. We could form false memories or simply forget what we just felt. We could feel something but not be able to think about it, act based upon it, or talk about it. This happens with split-brain patients: the right hemisphere is able to detect objects alright (and even draw them), but it cannot *talk* about it. What's worse, the right hemisphere does not notice that it cannot talk about anything. How does that conscious state (or "soul") function? Was the person's soul divided?
3. There is even an argument from the philosophy of time. The standard Minkowski interpretation of Einsteinian relativity in terms of a 4D spacetime seemingly entails eternalism – that there is no objective present and that time does not objectively pass. Reality is static; time is a static relation between static events; the flow of time is an illusion. Yet, conscious states seem intrinsically dynamic, although they are in fact static.
These statements show that conscious states might not be what they appear, contradicting Berkeley's principle "esse est percipi". And if there can be a partial cognitive illusion about qualia, why not a complete cognitive illusion?
I think it is, even after reading Dan's elucidative posts, a really hard sell that Dennett even gets off the ground in reducing qualia to something other than qualia. The idea that "unification", "access" and "temporality" of conscious states is amenable to change doesn't at all infer, to me, that qualia are not qualia as currently understood. Its not just counter-intuitive, but counter possible-experience. In that way, even if it were true, I don't think its actually reasonable to expect a human mind to discuss the fact of its non-existence - given we operate via qualia at levels from sense experience to thought.
It may not be virtuous to be dismissive, but I do think it's virtuous to not waste time discussing something that, at it's base, appears to be not possible.
Quoting AmadeusD
I agree with this. There are some things that are so obviously wrong, they (and the people that support them) can be justifiably dismissed out of hand: flat-earthers, YE creationists, phrenology, palmistry, etc. Is anyone here going to spend much time arguing with a breatharian?
Am I a zombie? No. Ah, but what if you rephrase the question? Is my conscious experience and mind and subjective experiences some kind of illusion so that in effect I'm actually a zombie? No. I think a winning move in a debate with people like Dennett is to ask them to smash their finger with a hammer and then say qualia doesn't exist or is an illusion. Intense pain is probably the best rejoinder to the claim, "we're all zombies"*. When my back flares up... if only I were a p-zombie!
And I get being dismissed out of hand. My own pet theory, idealism, is taken seriously by very few. It is a very hard sell. But I sense a change in that. Panpsychism is on the rise. People are even seriously discussing plant consciousness. The materialist paradigm is teetering. That doesn't mean idealism will win out, but any loss of faith in materialism is going to translate into some gain for idealism. Bernardo Kastrup has a following. As science continues to flail away at the hard problem and more bottles of win are won by philosophers, I see my position as only getting stronger.
*Note that this is not like Johnson kicking the rock. Rock-kicking is consistent with immaterialism. Intense pain, on the other hand, directly contradicts any notions of zombiism.
Compared to someone like Christof Koch, I'm a scientific ignoramus. But is that your point? So what? Does that make me wrong? 100 researchers haven't accused me of pseudoscience. I didn't lose a humiliating bet to David Chalmers. I would gladly have taken some of Koch's wine too, if he had been inclined to bet me. So who's ahead of the game, me or the integrated information "experts"? It was very entertaining when that j'accuse! pseudoscience letter was published.
At least we can agree on that.
And it is like you don't recognize that your ignorance makes your opinion on the matter uninteresting, and tedious to respond to.
Thanks for the walm welcome. Illusionism is indeed a hard sell. It is, however, at least conceivable that there could be cognitive machines (functional minds) outputting false beliefs about there being ineffable experiences. This makes some sense when we consider that conscious experiences involve numerous cognitive judgments, rather than being (purely) some form of raw feeling. It is this feature which gives me hope that perhaps consciousness is just a cognitive illusion. However, like you, it does not fully convince me either.
It is alright to be dismissive with an inept interlocutor. Flat-earthers are very bad at physics, for instance. Illusionists, on the other hand, bring arguments and insights from cognitive science on the table, equipped with contemporary analytic philosophy of mind. They are not denying scientific evidence. What they are denying is that we have introspective evidence of qualia, and they do so by providing a somewhat detailed cognitive theory of how that comes about. I think their case is sufficiently well-argued for us to take them seriously.
At any rate, thank you for the cordial exchange. I enjoyed reading your first-hand account of what it is like to be an idealist. I have already consumed some of Kastrup's work, it is interesting indeed.
I assume you're taking it in good humour, but i am sorry. I should've been more cordial in a first comment!
Quoting DanCoimbra
I suppose to me, that is true, but its not worth pursuing given we haven't got started as to how to attempt to move toward bringing it about, really. But you're right - it is conceivable and imo, logically possible. I bite the p-zombie bullet as it is atm
They're clever. They know their facts. I just think it's an obvious dead end. I notice that in the 2009 Philpapers survey, non-physicalism regarding the mind was at 27%. In 2020, it exploded to...32%. Still, if these trends continue...
I was not jesting at all! Sorry, I had the mistaken memory that you had explicitly welcomed me, because this has happened too often (people here are very welcoming). Then I thought your welcome to be warm because you paid attention to my remarks and also said they were elucidative. :-)
Welcome to the forum Dan :) I can see you're going to really contribute a lot here. Unfortunately, my interests and proclivities aren't around mathematics or modal logic per se so we may not interact too much - but very glad to have you here, from what i've seen :)
If you describe the human being as a non-physical spirit with a body, the physicalist must say that the thing being identified as a non-physical "spirit", is really a supervening moment necessitated by a conscious brain.
Certainly seems plausible. At the very least, there is the physical. There is no real reason to deny the presence of the physical. Physicalism appears an elegant solution to a sensing, bodily being.
Thanks to Plato and Kant, we have to admit there are serious difficulties with really saying what a physical, individuated thing is in itself. So, though I think we have to admit the omni-presence of the physical, we haven't yet really satisfied ourselves that we have any actual explanation of physical things.
After searching round and round the cave under all of its physical, fleeting manifestations, being unsatisfied, what real use is it to introduce non-physicalism for more explanatory power? We don't even know what matter is, and so to insert something non-physical seems like a naïve way of introducing another unexplainable substance, adding confusion, making things worse.
But do we just need more science of the physical then, to really explain what an individuated, moving thing is? Though the physical is always there, I don't agree that the physical alone can account for my experience. We can't do what we are doing right now, namely, passing ideas from one mind to another through words, or, in other words, communicating, without the non-physical. Meaning is not physical. I mean, I know you are familiar with meaning, and use it every time you speak. We are submerged in meaning, because we are human beings.
I can say "you know what I mean" or I can say "you catch my drift" - these are different physical things, but with the same meaning, so we have three "things" here: my first phrase, my second different phrase, and the meaning of each, which happens to be the same meaning...if you are following me and digging what I'm laying down here. To make use of words, we make meaning, apart from the words. Same meaning, different words, means words and meaning are different. Meaning is the non-physical part, and only there when fabricated in a mind.
We, human minds in communication with one another, meaning things, become the bookends on the physical. We are the limit of the physical. Only from here, in the attempt to communicate meaning across the abyss of the physical, standing somewhere/somehow outside the physical, can we ask about the physical and physicalism. There is no question in the necessity of the purely physical, yet here we are, communicating our wonder over this experience.
Another way to say what I mean: the physical is tied to necessity, but if something is said to "supervene on" the physical, it must not be physical, or it would not be supervening, and it would remain part of the chain of necessity. There is no supervening on the physical without something non-physical. Somehow, we alone are that supervening, saturated in a world of immateriality.
Now whether this meaning matters, that is another question. (Yes I said "matters" as applied to "meaning" and meant "matters" in the sense of 'means anything to you' - and yes, I meant to make a pun of the words 'matter' and 'meaning'; the pun, where meaning makes a mockery of the matter/words.)
But for physicalism to mean that meaning can be fully reduced to the physics, does not seem to account for this very conversation, if any of us have meant anything here, or if any of us 'see what the other is saying', or might say "I understand." You feel me? Physics just doesn't cut it, at least not deep enough.
On your post directly above you question if meaning can be reduced to physics. Probably not in the sense we could find out the exact mechanism but it's still a likely guess that holding meaning actually is possible because the physics supports it.
Another question in the same area and I think a little more focused is can our physical brains conform to specific subject matter? I really enjoy the infinity discussions going on here now (other threads) and by that evidence I say yes and we do it very well. The opinions we form don't always agree and often disagree but for individuals it is a problem of matching mental capabilities with an inflexible subject matter. Some do it better than others. In areas of specialty... capabilities are built up over years and years. In other cases insights come quickly.
So meaning doesn't reduce to physics but brains can conform to specific subject matter. More of a reaching out and capturing than a reducing down it appears.