Different levels of reality are structurally irreconcilable which led Sellars and the linguistic contextualist to draw clear-cut distinctions between them. The difficulty with this approach is that the occurrences at the macroscopic level cannot be treated as independent from those at the physical level. Rather, the different levels are connected and dependent on one another. For the contextualist to offer a convincing account, he or she must explain the details of this connection. This chapter argues that the levels of reality are the result of different experimental and cognitive processes used in empirical research that alter the observer’s cognitive state and thereby the detection process. The structural inconsistencies between the different levels of reality are thus the result of the differences in prior knowledge or information the observer adds to the system. Once we include the observer in our analysis, we find that the inconsistencies dissolve after quantifying the differences in information put into the system under investigation between the observing systems. In contrast to the liberal naturalist who denies the clash, the perspective presented here suggests that a structural clash exists but avoids the problem of having to assume a disunified world.

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Information Processing and the Clash

  • Arthur C. Schwaninger

摘要

Different levels of reality are structurally irreconcilable which led Sellars and the linguistic contextualist to draw clear-cut distinctions between them. The difficulty with this approach is that the occurrences at the macroscopic level cannot be treated as independent from those at the physical level. Rather, the different levels are connected and dependent on one another. For the contextualist to offer a convincing account, he or she must explain the details of this connection. This chapter argues that the levels of reality are the result of different experimental and cognitive processes used in empirical research that alter the observer’s cognitive state and thereby the detection process. The structural inconsistencies between the different levels of reality are thus the result of the differences in prior knowledge or information the observer adds to the system. Once we include the observer in our analysis, we find that the inconsistencies dissolve after quantifying the differences in information put into the system under investigation between the observing systems. In contrast to the liberal naturalist who denies the clash, the perspective presented here suggests that a structural clash exists but avoids the problem of having to assume a disunified world.