Chapter 7 - Reduction and Ontological Monism

Summary

Physical Eliminativism – the view that the only facts there are, are fundamental physical facts – is not implied by our reductive practices, as I argue in Chapter 7. The positive picture that emerges is one that can be characterised in terms of ‘ontological monism’ and ‘descriptive pluralism’: It allows for a plurality of descriptions of a system, e.g., on a micro- and on a macro-level, none of which is ontologically privileged as the exclusively true account of reality, provided they are empirically adequate.