Updated FAQ Entry: Why Should I Care About Epicurean Physics When So Much Science Has Changed In The Last 2000 Years?

Reductionism is true for the simple reason that we know of nothing that can't be reduced to atoms. Literally everything is made of bosons and fermions. I personally favor the reductionist version of Epicureanism. So called emergent phenomena aren't real but that doesn't mean or imply that reality is an illusion in some sort of way.

In this debate I side with Tim O' Keefe. Here's the abstract of his paper.

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Epicurus' "On Nature" 25 is the key text for anti-reductionist interpretations of Epicurus' philosophy of mind. In it, Epicurus is trying to argue against those, like Democritus, who say that everything occurs 'of necessity,' and in the course of this argument, he says many things that appear to conflict with an Identity Theory of Mind and with causal determinism. In this paper, I engage in a close reading of this text in order to show that it does not contain any clear statement of either a doctrine of radically emergent properties and "downwards causation" (contra David Sedley) or of the non-reducibility of the mental to the atomic (contra Julia Annas). I argue that Epicurus' main thesis is that we cannot consistently argue against our conception of ourselves as rational agents, and that it is our reason that allows us to reform our characters, control our actions, and blame and praise one another appropriately. The way that Epicurus describes the development and causal efficacy of reason in "On Nature" book 25 is consistent both with reductionism and (more surprisingly) with causal determinism.

IMO emergence has become popular because it promises a middle way between dualism and physicalism. You can have your cake of not believing in the supernatural and eat it with the pleasure of knowing that, while the cake is made of atoms, it is somehow more than those atoms.

Stephen Hawking said in an interview that the human race is just a chemical scum. Well, emergence allows us to accept we are a chemical scum while rejoicing in being more than just a chemical scum. This appeal is part of the reason for the remarkable spread of the term. It can be found everywhere, from fundamental physics to chemistry and biology, to sociology and economics.

However appealing, it is an illusion. To be real means to have causal power. If everything is physics, only the atomic entities of fundamental physics have causal power. Other things are therefore unreal, illusions. So there are no objects. No creatures, colours or concepts. Instead, there are distinct arrangements of quantum fields.

Our sensory limitations mean we can’t see quantum fields. Our cognitive limitations mean we can’t intuitively understand them. Yet despite these limitations we perceive a world full of structure and meaning. From a physicalist perspective, this leads to many fascinating whys. Why do we perceive creatures, colours and concepts? Answering such whys doesn't require us to accept emergence and it doesn't require us to revise Epicureanism.