Explanation on Reduction…

Estudia: Okay, Phi’, you were about to explain to me the need for reduction based on the fact that knowledge is hierarchical. Go ahead, please.

Philo: Well, think about this. If you always first gained knowledge of things directly by observation and were very clear about those things in reality; then if you moved to a higher level concept while you retained a clear understanding of the lower level, you would be growing your understanding hierarchically. The fact of hierarchy would not be a problem for you. You could not use a higher-level concept without understanding its relationship to perceptual reality. Your new higher-level concepts, ideas and conclusions would be grounded in perceptual reality and hence would never be what we call floating abstractions.

Estudia: If I thought like that, I would have a chain of concepts in my mind that would connect every higher-level concept with the sensory data that was the first link in the conceptualization. Sure, I see that.

Philo: Good. But you must realize that people in general try to use higher-level concepts without understanding completely the intermediate steps.

Estudia: Why do they do that?

Philo: Well, there are several reasons. Impatience, aversion to effort ― they just don’t want to work at understanding the material, or even just simple error. One biggie for many is that they want to use what someone else has come up with or concluded. Other people’s ideas are just used without understanding the chain of concepts that led to the idea. You use a higher-level concept without fully understanding it and consequently you are a little confused, but you build on the idea anyway. You become more and more confused because the chain of knowledge is broken and the concept is not tired to perceptual reality. You are not grounded in your thinking and only accidentally will you wind up producing actual new knowledge or understanding that is factual.

Estudia: So what’s with the ideal of reduction?

Philo: We saw that we have to keep our ideas in context to connect them to reality, right?

Estudia: Right. And I can see that if the context is hierarchical, each level of structure serves as a connecting link. Oh!! That means that in order to keep things in context, we have to identify and remember each connecting link, right?

Philo: Exactly. This is why reduction is required. You have to be able to work in reverse order. From the higher-level concept you should be able go backwards to the step that logically led to the idea from perceptual reality.

Estudia: Ah! So we integrated concepts to move up the chain, and now we disintegrate or rather reduce them to move down the chain.

Philo: Yes. Reduction is the process of identifying the logical sequence of steps that relates a thought to perceptual data. This doesn’t mean you have to retrace the exact steps, but you must retrace the concepts with essentially the same logical structure.. It is the only way to remain objective. Your only direct contact with reality is through the data provided to you by your senses. The sense data is the standard of objectivity and all other concepts, thoughts, ideas, images, i.e. all cognitive material must be grounded in the data of the senses.

Estudia: Can you give me an example?

Philo: That’s your job. Think about this and see if you can take a higher-level concept and reduce it to its perceptual foundation.

Estudia: Hmmm. Okay. Right now?

Philo: No, next time.