A new materialism; against reductionism.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

My materialism is an ongoing process, so I welcome criticisms--I've decided I want to embrace an emergentism and a flat ontology. What follows is a collection of working notes.


Atoms are as real as feelings are as real as corporations are as real as signifying systems are as real as movies and religious organizations. Opus Dei is as real as the people that make it up--as a collective, it can be explained in terms of those people, as well as their capacities to interact, but it cannot be "explained away" by them--it cannot be reduced to them. As an organization, it's also capable of forming an assemblage with other things, giving birth to higher levels of emergent qualities and capacities. Maybe a thing is real insofar as it is capable of entering into an assemblage? I don't know yet. Perhaps a religious organization, itself an assemblage of devotees, might enter into an assemblage with a political party, itself an assemblage of politicians and mottos and corporate funding and systems of belief, to form a collective that seizes governing power over a specific society, itself an assemblage of laws and residents and geography and so on. I'm undecided as to how far I want to push the assemblage idea: people are assemblages of body parts and memories and dispositions and music taste. H20 can be explained in terms of hydrogen and oxygen, but it also contains properties and capacities that neither hydrogen nor oxygen do--it freezes at different temperatures; if we throw H20 on a fire, it'll react differently than if we throw hydrogen or oxygen on it, and so on. H20 is an assemblage that consists of hydrogen and oxygen, as well as the specific way the two interact. The new qualities and capacities emerge out of the combination. The emergent entity is as real as the parts that make it up, and it contains powers that cannot be located in the parts that make it up. I think each level of emergence calls for its own level of analysis: we fail to understand the affective qualities of poetry with speak of brain chemistry. It can only be properly explained at the level of Rilke, so to speak.

Assemblages, or groups, are irreducible to the individuals, or components, that compose them because they consist of two things. First, the individual components that, taken together, make up the assemblage. Now, if this were all there was to be said of the assemblage, then it would indeed admit of the potential for reduction. But the assemblage also consists of the complex and often unpredictable qualities of the relations of its components to each other. The assemblage is both dependent on its parts (this is what I mean by 2) as well as in possession of powers or capacities that cannot be located in any of its parts themselves (this is what I mean by 3). We cannot know ahead of time how components will react and relate to each other. Their relational capacities are not fixed but rather themselves emerge in the process of relating. The identity of the assemblage is not given, it is forged—the assemblage is an ongoing becoming of emergent properties (Spinoza’s affects—It is here worthwhile to note Deleuze’s refrain, adapted from Spinoza: we still do not yet know what a body can do!) That these emergent properties are dependent on the constitutive parts of the assemblage does not entail the reduction of the assemblage to its parts. Water doesn’t lose its power to wet or put out fires because it’s dependent on the complex interaction of a certain set of molecules. The emergent entities contain powers and capacities that cannot be located in any of its constitutive parts, but it is nonetheless dependent on these parts to constitute it. We have to take a detour through water itself to discover its powers.

The reason why this isn’t reductionism is because we can’t ever know the nature of that interaction in advance—we will always have to take a detour through the emergent entity itself. I also want to stress the complexity of assemblages: a society isn’t made up only of a group of individuals as well as the complicated and unpredictable way they relate with each other; it’s also a whole slew of other factors—it might also involve geography, music, dreams and expectations, job opportunities, norms, weather patterns, the way bad television has shaped one’s relationship with a domestic animal and so on and so on. The more nuanced a look we take at the assemblage the further we move from the possibility of reductivism. But it’s strange to say that we can’t explain a society by describing in detail each of its citizens. We can. We just can’t explain it away—we can’t exhaust its meaning; we can’t eliminate it.

Against Correlationism. The Correlationist proclaims thus: to speak of being, we must know being, and to know being means to situate ourselves within the inescapable finitude of human knowers. For Heidegger, this means that before we can formulate the question of the meaning of being, we must investigate that being for whom being is a question. Here's Bhaskar, from "A Realist Theory of Science" (39): "this defense trades upon a tacit conflation of philosophical and scientific ontologies. For if 'what we can know to exist' refers to a possible content of a scientific theory then that it is merely a part of what we can know is an uninteresting truism. But a philosophical ontology is developed by reflection upon what must be the case for science to be possible; and this is independent of any actual scientific knowledge. Moreover, it is not true, even from the point of view of the immanent logic of a science, that what we can know to exist is just a part of what we can know. For a law may exist and be known to exist without our knowing the law. Much scientific research has in fact the same logical character as detection. In a piece of criminal detection, the detective knows that a crime has been committed and some facts about it but he does not know, or at least cannot yet prove, the identity of the criminal." Thus, I think the way out of the finitude of the human knower is a transcendental inquiry. Whereas Kant asked: what must the subject be like for X to be possible? I (and the realists upon whom I draw) want to ask: what must the world be like for X to be possible? A transcendental materialism/realism as opposed to a transcendental idealism/correlationism.

The correlationist insists thus: well, in the very act of thinking about the being of the world without us, we make ourselves present to that world--for, are we not precisely the ones formulating the thought! I recall reading this in Berkeley: try to picture the existence of a tree apart from the existence of human knowers--you can't, because as soon as you picture the tree, it becomes a thought in the mind of a human knower. Meillassoux offers a pretty interesting response. He writes that, according to this trajectory of thought, “I can only think of myself as existing, and as existing the way I exist; thus, I cannot but exist, and always exist as I exist now” (After Finitude, 55). Even if I imagine a world within which I've recently died, I make myself present to that world in the act of thinking it. But this is, of course, absurd. You will die, regardless of whether or not the fact of your death is thinkable to you. What's more, if you concede this claim (and how couldn't you!), then you've conceded that the mere fact that we can't think a world without making ourselves present to that world says absolutely nothing at all about the nature of that world apart from us. Instead, if you want to insist that the fact of your death is indeed thinkable (which seems to be evidenced by the fact that we're all anxious about our deaths), then you will have conceded that a world without humans is in principle thinkable--for to think a world in which you don't exist is to think a world without making yourself present to that world.

[Flannel Jesus]

I'm a reductionist. I read your argument against it, and though it was compelling and thoughtful without a doubt, I think you missed the mark on a few counts. The post was a bit wordy, though, and there are just so many angles of attack for me, too many things to respond to (not implying that you were very wrong on a lot of ways, merely a little wrong in mostly the same ways in a lot of places).

This lesswrong article explains my reductionism quite well, I think. He uses some really good examples to get his point across, particularly the 747 example and the Newtonian Physics vs Relativity example. The emergent properties of water, a reductionist would say, are indeed implicit (at least statistically implicit) in the fundamental rules that govern the fundamental constituents of that body of water.

Have you ever played with Conway's Game of Life? This is actually what made me a reductionist. This game is a perfect example of reductionism in action. The game consists of only a very few rules to determine if a pixel should be black or white next turn, based on the surrounding pixels. And yet, with these simple rules, life forms! Not literal life of course, not even close to the definition of life -- life is more just a metaphor in this game, a metaphor for ordered complexity.

Take a look at this life form:


This shape is known as the "glider gun" because it continuously shoots out shapes called "gliders". So, one may say that the shape above has the "property" of shooting out gliders -- but at the same time, you're conscious that there is no rule that says gliders have to be shot out of this. There's no rule which makes this an actual property in the rules of the game. The only rules in the game are rules that determine black or white, pixel by pixel. That's not to say you can't talk about emergent properties, but in an example as clear as this, it's clear that those properties are, in fact, a direct result of the more fundamental rules governing the game.

Of course with our reality it's much harder to see that, given that we don't actually know all (or perhaps any) of the fundamental rules governing our universe.

Please do, before you respond, read the whole article. Even if it doesn't convince you that reductionism is correct, at least you'll have had the chance to get inside the head of a reductionist, even if only to better understand how to destroy that position.

[Dan~]

All spacial dimensions are divisible.
Reality can be reduced.

When reduced it's not the same as it was, but it's still an aspect of reality within a certain view point.

[Flannel Jesus]

All spacial dimensions are divisible.
Reality can be reduced.

This is peripherally related to Reductionism, but it's not the same thing.

[volchok]

This lesswrong article explains my reductionism quite well,

Quite interesting.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

Dan: while I do appreciate your contribution, I expect more than a bare assertion to the contrary of my post.

FJ: Thanks for the response. Regarding the wordiness: my post is just a collection of working notes, a string of Facebook posts actually--truth be told. In any case: I enjoyed the article. Though I am slightly confused about the reductionism that it offers: is it a reductionism only in principle? In the 747 example, the argument seems to be that, assuming we had enough computational power to support a full-blown reduction to basic particles, we could indeed reduce the 747 and explain its powers and capacities on a basic level. However, we don't, and so we ground our analyses on higher levels for pragmatic purposes.

The emergent properties of water, a reductionist would say, are indeed implicit (at least statistically implicit) in the fundamental rules that govern the fundamental constituents of that body of water.

I'm not sure I follow here. Water has capacities that are contained neither in hydrogen nor oxygen. Of course. But you want to say that "the fundamental rules that govern the fundamental constituents [that is, hydrogen and oxygen] of" a particular instance of water will have always-already implied the power to wet, for example. Have I mischaracterized you? Do you mean that, after understanding the way a body of water works, its capacities and powers, we can go back to its constituting particles and find those "emergent" capacities implicitly contained therein? Like a retrospective reductionism? Interesting. I'm not sure I see the force of this kind of argument. It seems like we'd still need to take a detour through the emergent entity to understand the interaction of its parts. And its parts can interact differently under different circumstances: water freezes at a certain temperature, a capacity that differs from the properties of the particles that constitute it.

Allow me an example of my own. I mentioned Opus Dei, the religious organization, as an emergent assemblage. Let's assume we have comprehensive information regarding every member of the organization. For the reductionist, this information will exhaust the capacities, affects, powers and traits of Opus Dei. To understand Opus Dei, we have to understand its constituting members--for the reductionist. Now consider the concept redundant causality. We can replace one member with another--two totally different people--and Opus Dei will continue to function in largely the same way. As an organization, does it not contain capacities to affect and be affected that cannot be located in any one of its members? When one member leaves and another joins, do we speak as if the entity has changed entirely? Does reductionism not entail this? And even here, I'm simplifying. Opus Dei isn't made up only of its members; it's also constituted by an ideology, an ethic, an ethos, a political agenda that shifts as the times do, a location, and so on. All these are elements of the organization. And, of course, this constitutes but one more level of explanation; for the reductionist, these people, these ideologies and so on are explained at the level of quarks of what have you. I'm just not sure I see the force of this kind of response. I mean, we hear all the time the idea that things can be reduced. But I want to see this kind of reduction carried out. If my preference for Dostoevsky over Tolstoy can be reduced to a group of neurons and the rules that govern them, then I want to see that kind of reduction. Barring that, we can clearly speak about such a preference on a higher level. So there's at least one pragmatic reason why we ought to speak in terms of emergentism, a pragmatism that is conceded and affirmed in the article you linked. But this relegates reductionism to the dreaded confines of the "in principle." In principle, we may be able to explain all of my mental states with reference to Descarte's evil demon, or the mad-scientist of the analytic's thought-experiments. In principle, sure.

volchok: have you anything to add? I am interested in entertaining criticisms of my position.

[Flannel Jesus]

I'm not sure I follow here. Water has capacities that are contained neither in hydrogen nor oxygen. Of course. But you want to say that "the fundamental rules that govern the fundamental constituents [that is, hydrogen and oxygen] of" a particular instance of water will have always-already implied the power to wet, for example. Have I mischaracterized you? Do you mean that, after understanding the way a body of water works, its capacities and powers, we can go back to its constituting particles and find those "emergent" capacities implicitly contained therein? Like a retrospective reductionism? Interesting. I'm not sure I see the force of this kind of argument. It seems like we'd still need to take a detour through the emergent entity to understand the interaction of its parts. And its parts can interact differently under different circumstances: water freezes at a certain temperature, a capacity that differs from the properties of the particles that constitute it.

If I had a working model of the elements "hydrogen" and "oxygen" and how they should behave in the world, and how they should interact with other particles, and that working model couldn't predict the properties of h2o, then surely the model is incorrect. Surely a correct model of how the constituent parts function would result in correct predictions about the whole functioning, no? Surely if I had a model of hydrogen and oxygen, and that model predicted that h2o would be a sand-like substance, something in my model is incorrect.

you said something about "retrospective reductionism" -- i think you're talking about the fact that we're going from the more abstract to the more fundamental, instead of the other way around. like, we understood how water behaves long before we understood anyhthing about hydrogen and oxygen, right? this is unavoidable -- we exist in a world of the abstract. we exist at the human level. we exist as macroscopic beings -- we aren't used to thinking about atoms, we did not evolve in an environment where it made sense to think about atoms. we evolved in an environment where it's efficient to think "George is a violent guy, I should stay out of his way" instead of "that bundle of quarks over there wants to destroy this bundle of quarks over here, so i should move this bundle of quarks somewhere else." We started out in the abstract, so it only makes sense that we're working backwards, working down to the less abstract. We're big things, you and I.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

If I had a working model of the elements "hydrogen" and "oxygen" and how they should behave in the world, and how they should interact with other particles, and that working model couldn't predict the properties of h2o, then surely the model is incorrect. Surely a correct model of how the constituent parts function would result in correct predictions about the whole functioning, no? Surely if I had a model of hydrogen and oxygen, and that model predicted that h2o would be a sand-like substance, something in my model is incorrect.

I'm not sure that this is the case. Objects seem to be more than their local manifestations. They have powers and capacities that are manifested in certain relations, but that are never fully or finally exhausted, because they're never fully or finally given. To paraphrase Spinoza: we still don't yet know what a body can do. Even if we were to add up all the qualities and capacities of an object, we couldn't ever exhaust it, because these powers aren't properties that the object has but rather events that the object does. Capacities that emerge out of a given relation of parts are often unpredictable, and--I want to claim--cannot be located in those parts themselves, taken independently of the emergent entity. Now, as you've gestured toward, we do do this; we do try to locate the potential to wet in hydrogen itself, so to speak: we construct a model that says X and Y of hydrogen such that, taken together with oxygen in the proper way, it will yield the power to wet. But we only ever do this retrospectively. Not because we happen always to be situated at the level of abstraction--this is where I disagree with you--but rather because reductionism is itself invalid. Starting with water's power to wet, we try to work out how it could be that hydrogen contains this potential, sleeping dormant within itself. But it was its complicated interaction with oxygen that brought out that potential--did it really exist beforehand? I mean, we speak of potential as if it were a rabbit in a hat, waiting to be pulled out. But the rabbit needs to be put into the hat, before it can be pulled out of it--no? This putting-in/pulling-out gesture comes with the forming of the assemblage, the complex interaction of its parts. This is precisely why we can project a reductionism retrospectively, speaking as if the particles always-already contained their potential to wet. The fact that we must always take a detour through the emergent entity speaks volumes about the efficiency of utility of reductionism.

[Flannel Jesus]

The way you're talking about oxygen, as if it has some inherent dormant quality of "wetness," is exactly the reason that you're not getting reductionism -- there is no "wetness" parameter that exists in the universe. "wetness" is itself an incredibly abstract thing. oxygen doesn't have dormant wetness. "wetness" is a sensation that we feel -- it is a macroscopic sensation, an abstraction. you don't expect to find macroscopic abstractions explicitly coded in to microscopic fundamentals -- this is what the concept of emergence is all about. you don't have to find dormant wetness in oxygen for oxygen to be capable of combining with other elements to help create the macroscopic, abstract sensation of wetness.

[Dan~]

Dan: while I do appreciate your contribution, I expect more than a bare assertion to the contrary of my post.

If I am understanding what you said in the OP, you say that the parts of an object are interdependent and if we reduce them, that is not their true nature because they are to be effected by the whole and the whole defines them.

I'd say reductionism isn't perfect, it's just part of our psychological nature. It's not an expression of reality or what is, not purely, it's just a way of shifting our perspective. A reflex of knowledge.

I don't feel allot is to be said about this, because it is simple and self evident.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

I'd say reductionism isn't perfect, it's just part of our psychological nature. It's not an expression of reality or what is, not purely, it's just a way of shifting our perspective. A reflex of knowledge.

Fair enough.

The way you're talking about oxygen, as if it has some inherent dormant quality of "wetness," is exactly the reason that you're not getting reductionism -- there is no "wetness" parameter that exists in the universe. "wetness" is itself an incredibly abstract thing. oxygen doesn't have dormant wetness. "wetness" is a sensation that we feel -- it is a macroscopic sensation, an abstraction. you don't expect to find macroscopic abstractions explicitly coded in to microscopic fundamentals -- this is what the concept of emergence is all about. you don't have to find dormant wetness in oxygen for oxygen to be capable of combining with other elements to help create the macroscopic, abstract sensation of wetness.

Sorry, I wasn't writing clearly. Of course I don't believe that oxygen contains the power to wet, dormant within it. That is precisely why I do not think that water can be reduced to its constituent part(icle)s. However, you wrote the following.

Surely if I had a model of hydrogen and oxygen, and that model predicted that h2o would be a sand-like substance, something in my model is incorrect.

You do, as I read it, affirm that based on an understanding of hydrogen and oxygen, we can predict the powers and capacities of water. How is this different from the claim that hydrogen and oxygen contain within themselves the potentials that are manifested in a water-assemblage? On what do you make such a prediction? If it's an after-the-fact, a retrospective projection that attempts to assimilate an understanding of hydrogen to the powers observed in water, then the subsequent reduction is, it goes without saying, invalid. If it isn't, then I don't see how your position differs from an affirmation of the pre-hatted rabbit.

[Flannel Jesus]

There is no "wetness" property. Not even H2O molecules have the property of "wetness". It's not an inherent property in anything.

Reduce wetness down to what it really means to be wet. For something to be wet, it has to have 2 properties: it has to be a liquid, and it has to weakly stick to the skin. Those are the two properties that make something feel wet.

I'm actually pretty sure that, with the knowledge of chemistry that chemists already hold, they could predict that, given this configuration of protons, neutrons, and electrons, using only the rules of chemistry and physics, it would be a liquid at room-temperature and it would form weak bonds (stick) to the molecules that make up our skin. In other words, they could predict that it would feel wet.

As long as you talk about macroscopic abstract properties and they have to exist, dormant, in the smaller levels, you're not getting reductionism, because you're not properly reducing. "Wetness" isn't a reduction at all. You have to see wetness for what it is: there is NO wetness in a single h2o molecule. It's not there. Not even in three of them. Wetness is a feeling that we macroscopic beings feel. When you say "I feel wetness, so the molecules that make this substance up must have a quality of wetness," you're committing what's known as a Mind Projection Fallacy. It's a hard fallacy to spot, but it's useful to spot it.

Look at my above post about Conway's Game of Life: when you make a particular shape in the game, the shape seems to follow certain rules: the shape that I posted, you see, seems to follow the rule "Shoot out gliders at every X iteration," or something like that. But we know, of course, that no such rule exists in the game. There are only the basic rules of the game, no more. This abstract rule, "Shoot out gliders," is not somehow a new rule. It emerges from just the old rules alone. You don't need a new rule to make it happen. You don't need to say, "When this shape occurs, shoot out gliders at ever X iteration." It'll happen on its own, because the fundamental algorithms already account for it.

What you seem to be positing, to the contrary, is that when 2 hydrogens and an oxygen get together, the universe has to have a new, ad-hoc rule to determine its behavior. You're saying that the universe has to explicitly have a rule saying, "When 2H and 1O get together, they have to cease behaving as they were behaving before, and we have a new law of physics for this particular combination that says 'behave like a liquid.'" Presumably you believe that there's a new, arbitrary ad-hoc rule for every molecular combination, no?

I would bet you a fair chunk of change, you won't find a single Chemistry professor who thinks chemistry works like that. You won't find a single professor who thinks, "Yes, the rules of chemistry arbitrarily change when you make combinations of atoms." I'm pretty sure they all think -- are sure, even -- that the rules of chemistry are consistent among all elements and all compounds of elements. I'm even pretty sure that they all think the rules of chemistry could theoretically (if not actually) be derived from just the laws of physics as well -- reductionism.

See, this is the point of reductionism -- you don't need to just make up ad-hoc rules to govern the behavior of new combinations of matter. The universe doesn't have a rule that says "Tylenon, behave like a pain-killer," or "h2o, be wet" or anything like that. That's what the whole study of chemistry is for in the first place - to reduce the patterns we see in chemicals to more basic laws.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

Before I respond, I want to thank you for this discussion. I lost faith with the likes of ZenKitty and Typist and considered dissolving my account out of frustration. I'm still working these views out, and I do believe your case is strong. That said, I'll attempt to flesh out my thoughts.

One lone molecule of H2O doesn't constitute water. It's the complex behaviour of multitudes of H2O within which molecules such as H3O and OH are brought into play as well. This is water. And I'm going to insist that no chemist can derive the outcome of this complex behaviour from a close analysis of a single molecule of hydrogen. And yes, I'm familiar with the MPF. Although I must concede a certain hesitation with it. Does not every analysis take a given as its object? There are, of course, clear fallacies to be found: the child that supposes the corporeal existence of a monster under his bed on the basis of his fear of the dark, for example. But is not all science premised on the concept that we are capable of apprehending the world as it is in itself, that the world as it is given is also the world as it is?

I don't accept your talk of rules and laws. There are, to be sure, regularities and patterns. There are virtual attractors that draw toward them patterns of action without themselves ever becoming-actual. But I don't think there can be a law that governs the actions and interactions of a complex number of entities in a static way. And it follows that neither do I suppose such a thing might be true of an emergent entity. Which is to say that no, I don't think new rules pop into existence every time a new entity emerges. But this is only because I don't conceptualize rules in this way at all. Rather, new patterns of behaviour emerge along with the emergent entities. For how could they do otherwise? The difference between your account and mine is that mine remains open, it admits of the new, while yours remains closed, classical, it forbids the manifestation of anything-otherwise. And I insist on the fact that we must always and forever take a detour through the emergent entity to be able to speak of a reduction to its parts. We must always take account of emergent patterns of behaviour in order to attempt to assimilate them to a more originary rule.

In Conway's Game of Life, a new pattern of behaviour emerges along with the glider-gun, as the pixels begin to act in a recognizable way. This new pattern of behaviour can't be located, like a rabbit forever pre-hatted, in the original rules of the game. It emerges.

[Flannel Jesus]

well then you're a reductionist, you're just not using the same words.

if you don't think that new actual ad-hoc rules are required to make the water wet, but that it will be wet by itself just by following the more fundamental laws, you're a reductionist. even if you don't know how to derive wetness from the more fundamental laws. hell, even if you think it's theoretically impossible to derive them apart from observation. as long as you realize that ad-hoc rules are not required to make the glider, or the wetness, then you are a reductionist.

[James S Saint]

I lost faith with the likes of ZenKitty

I had actually considered warning you about that one, but figured that it was more fair to let you learn for yourself.

[Flannel Jesus]

Yeah, Zen Kitty...
I'm not so negative about Typist though. I mean, I'm sure he thinks I'm an idiot, and I'm definitely not his biggest fan, but I don't know if he's really as bad as Zen. Then again, I don't really think I have a large enough sample size of posts by him.

[0belafekete0]

Reducibility, and I don't know if I give justice to Your argument, of the collective on basis of scientific methodology, is seeking lower other than higher levels of scientific premise. Lower levels of differentiation qua reductionist entails de-differentiation rather than integration. I've been trying to grasp, this, too, and. Kant failed in this attempt to posit some kind of synthesis between the synthetic and the apriori. The a priori foundation of pure logic, allows and ideal system of reduction from higher levels of logical conclusions to lower (more general ones) Therefore mixing the two, will not validate Kant, but it will Hegel, who used only transcendental logic. --the problem for hegel was similar,but for him the invalidation took the form of applicability vis. The new science, and although Marx did only substitute a material suit dressed on the system----(he did not burden himself with reductionsim, but assumed applicability and synthesis a given. Both ways fail, one by logical necessity, the other by a Kantian synthesis between scientific (synthetic) and logical (a-priori) elements. Thus Nietzche brought in the existence of will (to overcome this seemingly insolvable paradox)

[0belafekete0]

I have problem with your comment that "the reality of he constituents (individual) is as real as the reality of the group" The reason I have problem with this, is that just as you cannot reduce a materialism standpoint, a reality can not be assumed just on basis of interaction , even a loose interpretation of "reality" since quantum has come into the picture, "reality" has to be qualified by whose reality is it, (what group), if indeed it is. Even "reality" at all.

[anthropo-eccentricism]

Make yourself intelligible or accept my lack of an adequate response.

[Only_Humean]

if you don't think that new actual ad-hoc rules are required to make the water wet, but that it will be wet by itself just by following the more fundamental laws, you're a reductionist.

That the rules are ad hoc is implicit in the process of reduction. The "fundamental laws" are derived from the things we find wet and brittle and conductive - they're the fundamentals. Or am I missing your point?

[Flannel Jesus]

i'm not quite sure...

what I was calling an "ad hoc rule" was the idea that "h2o is wet" as opposed to "all of the particles that make h2o behave in such a way, because of the fundamental laws, that make them feel wet at macroscopic sizes at room temperature" -- if you have to posit a property called "wetness" to explain why water feels wet, then you're not reducing anything. you haven't explained why it feels wet, you've just given a mysterious phenomenon a mysterious name. we're no closer to understand why water feels wet after saying that it's because it has the property of wetness than we were before we posited that property.

it's like "phlogiston". why do things comubst? phlogiston. phlogiston is what causes fire. okay, but why? well, because phlogiston has the property of combustibility. okay, but why? you see, you're not explaining anything by just giving words to your experiences. you're not breaking them down. just saying "water is wet because h2o has the property of wetness" is like saying "logs light on fire because they have phlogiston".

phlogiston is, by the way, a real concept that people used to use to explain combustion, i'm not just making this up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston