Frederick KOH

But naturalistic/non-naturalistic is a distinction our culture makes. You are applying it to practices in theirs. Is our culture privileged?

I'm not used to language like this. Too long in an egalitarian context I suppose. Anyone is free to point specific instances and revive them. I have i...

I want to give them a hard target, in this case Steven Weinberg, and see what they really mean in plain language.

No, you used the criteria of whether an explanation was naturalistic: But then you say That being the case, why this mode of explanation and not other...

This was not your original response (the one involving naturalistic explanations). Could you provide a synthesis of this response and the original one...

Then back to the chicken soup and the King's Touch. Why?

So back to the chicken soup and the King's Touch. Why?

Why can't someone say the same thing for grounds in general, natural or not?

But these things are achieved by even cultures that don't privilege naturalistic explanations.

What is behind this privileging of naturalistic explanations?

The sentence after the one you quoted is the one that matters.

That's why Weinberg didn't get more specific than "the fundamental principles of physics". There are people trying to win prizes by replacing or radic...

Except that scientists are the opposite of priests. The greatest honours go to the scientists who overthrow the most established "Laws". That is why t...

But I was responding to this Are they equivalent?

What about the chicken soup? We treat it differently from the King's Touch without having first reduced it.

What is meant by covered? When a protein "acts as a message to a system" the steps can either be broken down into interactions explained by chemistry ...

In his texts, his actual references to other sciences and the views expressed about them contradict what you say.

He gave an example using chicken soup and the King's touch. Is the outright dismissal of the King's Touch metaphysics?

Quote him.

Using calculations by hand you can't model anything more complicated than the hydrogen atom. Computers are used for more complicated atoms. Higher tha...

Finally... Is this reductionist: When Edelman says that a person cannot be reduced to molecu- lar interactions, is he saying anything different (excep...

Ornithologists don't expect to be able to derive everything from chemical bonds either. What's your point?

Isn't the very idea of abstraction leaving things out?

I will let Steven Weinberg answer this one: When Edelman says that a person cannot be reduced to molecu- lar interactions, is he saying anything diffe...

All you had to do was quote a comment of mine.

Molecules in motion is one thing. Pressure, temperature and volume is another.

Have I said anything to suggest otherwise?

Modelling physical phenomena using mathematics? How novel!

In the example that you gave, they were fundamental only because they were studies of abstractions, of idealized objects. One of the things that tends...

Surely you know that DNA replication is something that has been explained at the level of individual molecules. What does "enable" mean in the context...

They are not nuclear bonds. You don't need to go further than chemical bonds (valency, van der Waals, ionic, etc

Actually it has been done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_bond

So what is being encoded is the sequence of molecules cytosine (C), guanine (G), adenine (A), and thymine. We are in agreement here. They are molecule...

Could you provide a synthesis for our benefit?

There is a chapter in a book of Steven Weinberg entitled "Two Cheers for Reductionism". Would he count as a reductionist?

So DNA are molecules. Genes are portions of DNA. Genes are replicators. Is there anything here you disagree with?

The former is is widely known in the literature. Can you give me references for the latter?

Genes or DNA, would it be reductionist to say that they behave the way they do because of chemistry and physics?

I am coming round to the view that anti-reductionists don't like scientific details or even bother with them.

Abstraction is a tool that can be applied to many areas of inquiry. Be that as it may, the "replicators" are still DNA and RNA if you are studying bio...

Like mathematics, it is a study of abstractions, in this case abstractions related to information. It is not one of the natural sciences.

Branch of physics?

Each step of the cycle depends on the gas laws that as I have mentioned, are explained by atomic theory and the kinetic theory of gasses.

Whooaaa...hold on a minute here. We do agree that the replicators are DNA (and RNA for some lifeforms) right?

In these cases, the objects of study are abstract and not coincidentally, they are not considered branches of the natural sciences.

If I say "the relationship between the energy, pressure volume and temperature of a gas in a container can be completely explained by atomic theory an...

If I say "the replicators are the way they are because of chemistry and physics" would I be a reductionist?

Before there were security and surveillance cameras, the best alternative was to make people believe in an all-seeing God.

I was hoping to provoke "anti-reductionists" to comment here.