Howard, I liked your comments! Here are some
thoughts in response.
#1 The paper on Emergentism lists Watson as a
reductionist, although I would suggest his reduction to the physical
sciences was more hype than a well thought out theory and behaviorism is
inconsistent in its reductive stance.
In interpreting Watson I was drawing on his 1913 paper; that and the
ensuing history of behaviorism were reductionist at least in the sense of
reducing mental states to observable behavior, if not to the physical
sciences. But Watson was not the only behaviorist to write that
"The findings of psychology…[will then] lend themselves to
explanation in physico-chemical terms" (1913, p. 177); many of the
"unity of science" theorists of the 1950s felt that behaviorism
was quite compatible with an eventual reduction to physical
sciences. Why do you say that this is an inconsistent
position?
#2 You list Comte as an
emergentist. I understand Comte as a phenomenalist in some ways similar
to the logical positivists and not a materialist. How is Comte an
emergentist?
(I'm not sure what you mean by phenomenalist.) Comte is a
complicated one to interpret. I was still uncertain after I
finished reading his two major works. In my Durkheim article, I
point out that both Boutroux and Durkheim were uncertain about Comte's
position on reductionism (forthcoming, Sociological Theory).
Comte wrote some reductionist stuff, like (in Positivism, Volume
2) p. 112: “The subordination of social science to biology is so evident
that nobody denies it in statement, however it may be neglected in
practice” and at some point in the future, “biology will be seen to
afford the starting-point of all social speculation.” But then in
System of Positive Polity he wrote the famous emergentist line:
"A society therefore can no more be decomposed into individuals,
than a geometric surface can be resolved into lines, or a line into
points" (p. 153).
#3 Comte was influential on
Skinner; and Tolman (speaking about positivism in a 1991 book) concluded
that behaviorism was not materialist but phenomenalist. Could
behaviorists be emergentist, but be stuck in methodological
individualism?
I can't see how behaviorism could be interpreted as emergentist, but let
me know what you mean by phenomenalist.
The above may be somewhat
misguided, but I'll venture 1 additional question. Is it possible that
much science is firmly reductionist and individualist in methodology but,
inconsistent in ontology (and, due to lack of philosophical thinking, may
be not much interested in the question). Can emergentism be a way of
exposing and resolving some inconsistencies?
I obviously think that emergentism can help! You're right that most
scientists don't think about it too much. But in my experience,
they tend to be, at least implicitly, realist in ontology (thinking that
the properties, laws, and entities that they talk about actually exist in
the world, in contrast to logical positivism/empiricism).
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