<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>In this paper I discuss John Bickle’s attempt to provide a formal procedure to locate a certain reduction relation in the Hooker’s and Church-land’s New wave reductionist spectrum. Bickle’s main motivation is to react against the ‘Khunnian flavored,’ internal-to-scientific-practice pragmatist solution endorsed by Patricia Churchland when faced with the lack of a formal and external way to identify a reduction in the spectrum. Bickle tries to solve this problem by reformulating Hooker’s insights within a structuralist framework so establishing an external-toscientific-practice formal solution. I show that Bickle fails on his attempt and, as a consequence, we should adopt Patricia Churchland pragmatic stance regarding reductionist and ontological decisions.</p></abstract>

In this paper I discuss John Bickle’s attempt to provide a formal procedure to locate a certain reduction relation in the Hooker’s and Church-land’s New wave reductionist spectrum. Bickle’s main motivation is to react against the ‘Khunnian flavored,’ internal-to-scientific-practice pragmatist solution endorsed by Patricia Churchland when faced with the lack of a formal and external way to identify a reduction in the spectrum. Bickle tries to solve this problem by reformulating Hooker’s insights within a structuralist framework so establishing an external-toscientific-practice formal solution. I show that Bickle fails on his attempt and, as a consequence, we should adopt Patricia Churchland pragmatic stance regarding reductionist and ontological decisions.

On Bickle’s failure to give a formal account of the location in the new-wave reductionist spectrum

Disputatio

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In this paper I discuss John Bickle’s attempt to provide a formal procedure to locate a certain reduction relation in the Hooker’s and Church-land’s New wave...

On Bickle’s failure to give a formal account of the location in the new-wave reductionist spectrum

Published Online: Dec 31, 2018

Page range: 65 - 73

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2004-0011

© 2004 João Fonseca, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.