Episode 11.88: The Fallacy of Misplaced Contingency, or why “nothing-buttery” ignores what matters.

Every temptation that we have to say that one thing is “nothing but” some other, usually simpler and more primitive thing, is an example of what we call reductionism. Some reductionism is good because it allows us as a matter of method to see how things work, some reductionism is good because it is practical to do the reductionism and deal with the simpler form of the higher entity that we are trying to understand or use. But “ontological” reductionism saying that the very nature and being of some entity is nothing but the sum of its parts is a very serious philosophical, practical, moral and epistemological mistake. As an antidote we present “the fallacy of misplaced contingency“, a fallacy that we commit whenever we ignore by accident or design or malice the contingent, evolutionary processes that have gone to create the higher order entity that we are describing in lower terms. We really must stop doing this and we hope that by identifying the “fallacy of misplaced contingency” we will make a contribution to ensuring that we do.