But of course! That is how I naturally react to bumping into something which seems to be cohesive, and yet it makes no sense to me. I always assume that the error must lie my own bias, in how I observe said phenomenon, and/or how I organise and classify the data that I am picking up. So I have done a lttle research and found out that I was indeed right all along. "Naturalism" may seem to make sense to people who do not immidediately see the concept of "nature" as a mystical one, such as I do. I mean... think about it. What, exactly, is "nature"? We have a case of irreducible complexity. (And take this from someone whose childhood heroes were the Stoics, who held "nature" to be the only valid parameter for "truth".) But "nature" just isn't good enough. It is fundamentally flawed insofar that it is neither precise nor all-encompassing; hence, useless to the discipline of physics. It does, however, interact quite well with common sense.

[A little digression: I don't consider psychology to be a science. I would rather describe it as 'a field of study which is based in common sense and to some extent is subjectable to scientific methodology'. In fact, I will remain staunchly skeptical to the - in its purest sense - scientific validity of all such "social sciences", because in those fields of study you constantly run into mystical concepts such as "nature" or "life". Again, irreducible complexity. The question 'what are their basic parts and how does these basic parts work in unison in order to create the phenomenon we are observing' may not be asked without changing the premises for defining the concepts themselves. But there is one thing that is scientific, and that is memetics, or the study of how information evolves within an abstract environment of "consciousness" (another mystical concept!). You can, quite literally, trace how memes move within "bodies of consciousness" (which can be individuals or groups) by observing their behaviour - but what's even more important; it's predictable.]

I see your point. I should probably use an entirely different word, such as "metaphysical" - but that is already kind of taken, in the sense that it already describes something which is not related to the point I am trying to make, so I shall have to invent a word: Dysversive. (From dys; bad, abnormal, and versum; rolled into, changed. In the vernacular; non-interacting.) Consequently, something may have a dysversive relation with physics, but it is still a real (physical) phenomenon. It is not an example of irreducable complexity. The problem is in observational methodology and data handling. In this light, we see that even though something may be dysversive to physics (as a science) this doesn't mean it invalidates physics, rather that you have run into an irreducible meme (the idea cannot be reduced to smaller parts without losing cohesive meaning).

This is a possibility. But I hold it to be unlikely. I am quite capeable of understanding a lot of things. But I don't call myself a scientist, I am a philosopher. (My interest in science is only secondary, as a subset of ontology.) As you of course already know, the way of a philosopher is observation without evaluation.  This does however not mean that "anything goes". There is right and there is wrong... and it all begins with common sense. Science is nothing without common sense. Any kind of insanity can be elaborated into a highly accurate system of thought which is dysversive to common sense; it couldn't survive in the memetic environment without belief. In other words, it needs to interact on an emotional level. This will allow a lot of things that violate common sense to survive and evolve inside bodies of consciousness (memetic hosts). What is different with science is that it never violates common sense (although it might take some mind work to wrap your head around it at times). But it is dysversive to belief systems. If is can't be corroborated by common sense, it isn't science, no matter who you are and how much you believe in it.

And here is where my personal quirk steps in: If it isn't reducible to physics, it isn't science. It's a belief system. "Nature" is such a belief system, or rather a self-supporting memetic structure built from assumptions based in sentiment and mysticism. There is of course the "real" "nature", the one which exists, objectively, out there, but that one is a physical phenomenon, subject to laws of physics. Which means that physicalism - which encompasses all things described by physics, according to its definition - trumps naturalism on the evolutionary stepladder which departs from common sense.

 

Yeah, but that doesn't change the fact that faith may have pragmatic value. Besides, I have already established in one of my previous threads that induction (which is employed by science) is ultimately based on faith. IOW, you cannot do science without some element of faith. You can't make a prediction without an element of faith.

No. This is patently false. The scientific evidence is mounting that the so-called physical universe is fundamentally indeterminate (which is problematic for the deterministic worldview of materialism).

Materialism (or physicalism) is a metaphysical position ultimately based on faith, not evidence.

Correction. That's not an explanation.

The bottom line is that you are indebted to believers (those whom you characterize as irrational) for some of your most cherished rational principles.

You have failed to explain the difference. The truth is that the physicalist is simply moving the "goal posts" in order to mitigate the damage inflicted on the materialist worldview by the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

You have failed to provide objective evidence that subjective experiences are objective.

Dennett denies the existence of qualia (i.e. subjective experience). That's why it is called "eliminative" materialism. It eliminates something from the picture - namely, subjective experiences. (Note: I am citing a source below to support my claim.)

I was hoping that you were capable of crafting a better response. Evidently, I was wrong.

Correlations do not establish identification.

The bottom line is that someone with your intellectual prowess has failed miserably to provide a rational explanation (let alone objective proof) on how the subjective becomes objective.

How is the argument circular? Subjective awareness is not objective by definition.

Christof Koch (a prominent researcher in neuroscience who is seeking to establish a neural basis for consciousness) has explicitly stated in the introduction of his book entitled "A Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach" that phenomenal states appear to be too complex to be reducible to brain states (reductionism is the basis for identity theory).

http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Consciousness-Neurobiological-Approach/dp/0974707708/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266617706&sr=8-9

Also, John Eccles (Nobel laureate in neurophysiology) subscribed to interaction dualism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carew_Eccles 

 

By the very definitions of those words, you are wrong.

 

 

Check the wiki article on materialism.  It is an out-dated term.  They are not interchangeable in philosophical discussion.

 

 

I don't know how many times we can tell you.  If physics can describe 'non-material' forces, then those things are, BY DEFINITION, physical.  You continue to think that if something has no substance it is non-physical.  That is where you are wrong.

 

 

I don't know enough about the uses of information in physics to say anything authoritative other than I know that it is a key aspect of physics and consequently is physical.  Physical things can lack substance.

 

EDIT: This quote from wiki should help too. (taken from the physicalism page)

 

"Physicalism is also called "materialism", but the term "physicalism" is preferable because it has evolved with the physical sciences to incorporate far more sophisticated notions of physicality than matter, for example wave/particle relationships and non-material forces produced by particles."

And there was me thinking that you'd missed passed my post...

 

That's pretty much it.
That's why the new term was invented.
So materialism doesn't mean the same as physicalism, and it does include "non-material" concepts that have come up in modern physics.
 

Yes. I think that the technical term is "property dualist" - very different to "substance dualist".

I've had a little too much alcohol to do it tonight, but watch this space!!

Well, the Wikipedia article on QM seems to support my basic characterization. The wave function (which represents the probability distribution of the electron) is a mathematical abstraction.

Also, the term "cloud" appears to be only a conceptual device to give us a visual. It is not to be taken literally.

I agree that UNCERTAINTY is the real state of physical matter as depicted by present-day physics. But this only serves to underscore the point that I have articulated in this thread - that the nature of the physical is INDETERMINATE.

That's what I was trying to establish...that "mass(matter) itself is a force." And if elementary particles are actually dimensionless (which the models would suggest and some scientists believe), then do they really qualify as substances?

OKay.

I know who  he is but I am not very familiar with his thought. However, the Wikipedia article on his "Philosophical Investigations' provides the gist of what he is saying concerning language and meaning - mainly that words are defined by how they function in a given context, not in reference to the things or ideas one believe they represent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations

Okay.

Agreed.

But something that is not physical is nonphysical by definition. Therefore, the term "nonreductive physicalism" is inherently self-refuting.

What definition was that?

 

Wikipedia's... objectivity varies deeply on the basis of

1. The administrators currently in charge of the site, and of course, their pet peeves, religious participation (or cult membership, as sometimes is the case), their envisioning of how the website should be run, and... naturally, their intellectual biases.
2. The desires and whims of whatever users happen to be accessing the site at one particular moment.
3. The attempts of special interest groups (off the top of my head: Scientologists) to sway public opinion in one direction or another.

 

To base any argument on wikipeda is to simply say "I am not willing to do my own research on the subject"

That's a decent enough start.
I still think it would help if you had a quick read through this page, but either way I'll give a quick summary of where I'm going with this.

Wittgenstein was concerned that philosophers could get themselves lost by letting language run away with itself. One example is "you cannot step in the same river twice", the implication being that next time you step in the river it will have changed slightly since the last time you stepped in it and no long be the same river. Wittgenstein would say that if we looked at what we mean by "same river" in real usage, i.e. the flow of water in the geographical location, then it would stay the same river each time we stepped in it. The claim "you cannot step in the same river twice" abuses the concept of "same river" by taking it out of the context how we really use it. He suggests that we can solve many philosophical problems by investigating the words we use, reflect on how we apply them in everyday usage in order to illuminate their proper meaning and context and then perhaps see where they are being abused.

I believe that the mind/body problem is of this type and can be solved by such an investigation.
I'd like to start by doing such an investigation into some our physical concepts.
I'll then give you a chance to comment/disagree with Wittgenstein and my investigation or physical concepts, and then request that you do a similar investigation into some mental concepts.

 

An Investigation of Physical Concepts

Here I'm going investigate some physical concepts by looking into how we apply them in everyday life.
These concepts are all used within the context (or "language game" ) of describing the physical world around us.
We use these concepts when describing the physical world that we touch, taste, etc...
It's used to describe the objects in this world and how they behave.
 

Physical Objects
These are objects that we see, hear and/or touch with our senses.
Sometimes we're referring to a particular object, e.g. "my heart" or "your brain".
Other times we're referring to a type of object, e.g. "hearts" or "brains".
Ofcourse, there are physical objects that we cannot directly perceive, e.g. those too small like electrons.
Pedanticism aside; our bodies are constructed from, and are themselves, physical objects.

Physical Laws
Physical laws describe how physical objects behave.
E.g. a ball falls to the ground with an acceleration described by the law of gravity.
These physical laws determine how chemicals react, which in turn determine how biological organisms function.

Physical Causation
"A causes B" basically means that if A happens, then B will also happen.
In physical causation we're saying "If we have situation A, the laws of physics mean that the physical objects will behave in a way that results in situation B happening"
e.g. Letting go of a ball means that it will follow the laws of gravity and drop to the ground.
i.e. Letting go of a ball causes it to drop to the ground.

 

 

What I would like you to now do:
Firstly give your opinion on what Wittgenstein said about how we can solve certain philosophical problems by investigating use of language.
Then give your opinion on my investigation on physical concepts - I'm expecting that you might add a few ideas I've missed but will be surprised you go as far as to disagree with anything.
Then what I'd like you to do is do a similar investigation into the following mental concepts:
Desire
Personality
Free Will (You might do this one in terms of "choice", in which case describe the concept "choice" )
I'm looking for a description on how we came to be using these words, and how we use them in everyday context.
I'll then comment and give my 2c.
This will help us clarify what we mean by mental concepts, and then I'll have a go at using these foundations to analyse the mind/body problem.

Okay. Let's take your scientific reductionism to its logical conclusion:

- Sociology is the application of psychology

- Psychology is the application of biology

- Biology is the application of chemistry

- Chemistry is the application of physics

- Physics is the application of mathematics

- Question: What is mathematics the application of?

                       

                         

Logic?

 

I think Wittgenstein and I have been unfair to Heraclitus and that you're being unfair to Wittgenstein.
Heraclitus was making a metaphysical point using a metaphysical concept of "sameness".
Wittgenstein was pointing out that this metaphysical concept of "sameness" is different to the common usage, meaning that we can step in the same river twice as common sense suggests, so long as we stick to the common usage. 

The reason I bring semantics up is because I think that the mind/body problem is rooted in semantic confusions, and should we settle them then there ceases to be a problem. The whole point of that "investigation" was to compare the semantics of physical concepts to the semantics of mental ones. I believe that the "dualism" is in the context.

That's okay...
I wasn't really looking to make metaphysical claims here.
My point was that physical concepts are used in the context of describing what our senses see.
Physical objects are the object we sense, physical laws are a description of how these physical objects behave and causation is a relation between physical events. So it seems we're more or less on the same level here.

 

Okay... I don't disagree with any of these.
I was kind of looking for the everyday context within which we use these concepts, especially in contrast to how we use physical concepts.

e.g. To learn what a brain is we could show a picture of a brain, or show a brain itself and say "that's a brain".
We would then know what the physical concept "brain" is.
Would we do the same for "want" or "desire"?
We wouldn't point to an object of our senses like we do for physical concepts, so what would we do instead?

I already explained (in my second reply) that the best defense of physicalism is pragmatism. It works, and there are no explanations that work better. We have no reason to believe that the non-physical exists. At best (for non-physicalists), we only have reason to believe that we haven't yet discovered all the physical mechanisms underlying all sciences. But we don't have any good reason to believe that there is some inherent limitation that will prevent us from finding them. So far, all of our sciences have been steadily shown to be more and more explicable as extensions of physics (chemistry, biology, now neuroscience, et al.). We have no reason to believe that trend will not continue indefinitely. Occam's Razor says: Physicalism wins.

I didn't argue it was absurd. I argued it was wrong. And, for the same reason physicalism wins, science has loads of evidence for physical consciousness, and none for non-physical consciousness. The arguments of non-physicalists are only arguments, they have zero evidence. Occam's Razor cuts through the crap.

Physicalism wins for the same reason atheism wins. There's no evidence for anything else.

I see that what you may have in mind are concepts like "is dependant on", or "is derived from", rather than "is reducible to".

There are possibly two ways to see the word 'reduce' being applied here.

In one sense, the conceptual, you can only 'reduce' biology to physics if you literally throw away many fundamental concepts of the field, like evolution, in the process. In what meaningful way can you describe evolution in terms of quarks or energy flows???

Then there is the purely practical - even if you could in principle describe the process of sexual reproduction in terms of fundamental particle or atoms, it would be totally impractical and would completely obscure the essentials of the process in ultimately irrelevant detail.

If you mean that one area of knowledge may be expressible in terms of another set of concepts, like information, that seems plausible, to some extent. Something like information theory seems like a truly fundamental approach, which can apply to all scientific disciplines. Not sure if can efficiently or usefully apply comprehensively to all theories in any area of science, although it may well provide useful insights into all of them. 

However I see many sets of related disciplines, like Physics, Chemistry, Biology, being subdivisions of a whole set of knowledge which we have to sub-divide into the different disciplines for purely practical reasons, to make them manageable. In that view, 'reduce' makes even less sense. Each area has its theories and concepts which encapsulate the knowledge of the objects and processes it studies.

'Reduce' also implies a hierarchy, but I don't think that applies across all areas of study - as I said, most of Computer Science and related areas are not dependent on anything other than Logic and Math, ultimately. They are independent of the tree that Physics belongs in. It doesn't matter what are the specific physical properties of the components of any particular computer, as described by Physics.  Obviously they are closely dependent on Information Theory.

The relationship between all these areas is not a tree-like structure, there are too many cross-linkages. Most areas are depend upon one or more other areas, using concepts and tools derived in those areas. Many areas contain concepts which are not really expressible in the context of other areas. Some subjects can be identified as more fundamental, and I think all areas would be dependent on Logic and Math. Information theory is close to being a fundamental, although it obviously depends on Logic and Math. It can be employed in virtually all disciplines.

Logic is almost certainly the truly fundamental area, but I will wait for you to describe DNA replication in a series of logic statements...

It is the 'reduce' aspect of 'reducible' which give the lie to the concept - if some area of study is truly and practically 'reducible to' another, that means that it really should be regarded as a sub-discipline of the other.

I just don't think 'A is reducible to B' can validly and rationally be applied to any developed and useful area of study in terms of another, without actually reducing the information content.

I fundamentally object to 'reducible' in this context.

 

This is a different concept than what I responded to.  What is described by physics is physical, again, by definition.  I know physicalism is a metaphysical position based on science, but not necessarily scientific.  It doesn't matter, because what is described by physics is physical, which was my claim to your 'it doesn't follow that everything described by physics is actually physical.'  It is your misunderstanding of what the word 'physical' means that is the problem.

 

 

So what?  They aren't the same thing, even if people use them interchangeably.  Physicalists are materialists in the sense that they see only energy (right now) as the thing that is substance.  The confusion is over the word 'material.'  Non-material forces aren't composed of matter, and aren't material in that sense.  They are, however, consistent with a monist idea of one substance, or 'material' for the universe to be made of, energy.

 

 

Because what it means to be 'physical' and what it means to have 'permanent substance' do NOT equate.  Physical properties govern interaction of whatever it is that is the fundamental substance.  Right now, that substance is energy. 'Physical' encompasses both the 'substance of the universe' and how its various forms interact.

 

 

I am aware of that, because physical properties AREN'T substantial.  They are abstractions detailing the interaction of the 'fundamental material,' i.e. whatever it is that is the base substance of reality, right now, it's energy.  What I call physical ultimately reduces to what is energy (until we know what energy is comprised of or if it is really an irreducible 'material').

 

Same themes keep being smashed into a brick wall in these threads.

 

The free will argument/term needs to be thrown out. You don't have a time-machine, you have no way of verifying that you could have made any other choice. Which is actually funny because even if you did have a time machine, it might falsify free will instead of prove it.

 

You can't decide how to define physical an non-physical things? Seems to be quite obvious. Non-physical things should be synonymous with non-existing things! All we can ever know could only be contained in the form of experience. Whether those experiences were interpreted "correctly" by you or not is not the issue. 

           

The term physical seems to be a term that needs to be brought into context and not abused which is what's going on here. Matter (which is traditionally associated with physical solid objects in everyday layman's terms) IS energy (there is no other , therefore any interaction/transformation of those energies must also be defined as being physical. If you want to simply say that the physical sciences cannot describe consciousness then so what? We do not yet have the necessary tools and information to describe a lot of shit about the universe we live in. You can argue over the concept of sufficient evidence for beliefs but just remember that that concept is recursive. I'm skeptical whether consciousness can be shown to be anything other than a subjective term at this point since no amount of emulation and knowledge will convince some people, the goal post is always changing.

 

Just as using words that have multiple meanings in no context can be confusing, you have on the other end structures that can be described mathematically but not represented in any way by informal human language. We have to extend already existing concepts or come up with new artificial ones to explain these representations to our primitive brains. Using language to say "that rock is hard" really isn't all that different then using an equation for force interactions of particles, some people just have more archaic definitions stuck in their heads.

 

I tend to think of "is reducible to" as "is explainable in terms of", meaning that apparent entities can be 'reduced' to their simpler, constituent parts, until you reach a 'fundamental' level which resides entirely within the science of physics. In other words, all entities in biology are actually complex entities made from fundamental entities of physics, i.e matter/energy, spacetime, forces, information, processes, etc. We can explain everything in biology in terms of these more fundamental concepts. When I hear people like postmodernists complaining about 'reductionism' in science, this is the kind of thing they complain about: "Oh, you think we're all just atoms and molecules, and how dreary is that?!" This is the primary sense in which I try to defend reductionism. My response is: "Yes, we *are* entirely atoms and molecules and other fundamental physical entities, but that's not dreary at all. In fact, it's amazing!"

Evolution is a process. Processes deal with transformations of information. They are not necessarily restricted to a particular substrate such as quarks/atoms/whatever. For example, I consider biological evolution to be the same basic process as cultural evolution and the evolutionary algorithms of GA and GP. There are of course variations, but the core process can be considered the same or functionally equivalent in a meaningful way (analogous to how various NP-complete problems can be shown to be equivalent). Just as QuickSort can be implemented in a computer, or by a person manipulating pieces of paper by hand.

Since processes fall within information theory and physics, I consider the process of evolution to be reducible to physics. Eventually, we'll have a complete theory that relates information and processes to things like entropy and system stability, making this reduction more obvious and concrete. It's tantalizingly close already.

Here's a good thought experiment to show that evolution is a process independent of medium: What is a gene? Is it DNA? No. It can be RNA too. Maybe it's a sequence of nucleic acids. Okay, that seems to make some sense. But when we sequence a genome and store the genome in a computer file, is the gene still there, or does this not count as a gene? It's no longer encoded as three-digit base-4 codons, it's stored as a string of bits. And what happens if we compress that file, so that the representation appears random and has no obvious relation to the original codons?

Perhaps you may be tempted to say that this file does not contain the original gene. Well, imagine that the original DNA-encoded gene was a unique gene. For example, imagine it was the gene which was recently evolved to allow E. Coli to eat citrate. Now, imagine that gene has been sequenced, and zipped up in a genome file stored as an attachment to some biologist's email. And further, imagine that all the E. Coli with that mutation have been utterly destroyed so that no DNA in existence encodes that gene. Also, no human remembers the gene sequence, and no other representation of that gene exists anywhere, except for that zipped email attachment. If that zipped attachment does not contain the gene, then we can say that the gene has been completely destroyed and no longer exists.

So, when the biologist reads his email, unzips the genome, and synthesizes a new DNA strand, and injects that strand into an E. Coli, and that E. Coli is able to eat citrate, where'd the gene come from? My answer: It was always there, as *information*, encoded in various forms, including in the zipped email attachment.

Evolution does not work on atoms or quarks or electrons. It works on information. It just so happens that the machinery of biological evolution is implemented with atoms and molecules and cells, but that's just one possible substrate for the identical process of evolution. This is why information and processes need to be considered fundamental, and not merely accidental or interpretational.

This is how I tackle similar 'problems' like emergence and whatnot. They are short-hands for basic, fundamental entities like information and processes.

You don't have to describe it in terms of atoms. You can describe it in terms of information. The relevant entities of evolution are things like genes, which are information. Before we knew about DNA, we already had concepts of genes, from Darwin and Mendel. DNA is simply the mechanism for encoding genes, it is not the genes themselves.

I think information theory is just in its fledgling stages and will become a core, basic area of study for all sciences. Today, many scientists use the idea of information without explicitly acknowledging it. Psychology and sociology are good examples. I think neurology will end up being the tipping point and once we understand cognition in terms of information and processes, then things like psychology and sociology will really begin to click together. Evolution is another area where explicit use of information concepts will become very important, especially in relating evolution to thermodynamics.

I think you answered your own objection there. Computer science deals with information. Information is physical.

Not all hierarchies are trees. All you need is a directed acyclic graph (DAG), and that all the fundamental concepts fit within the study of physics. The human division of the sciences may not perfectly prevent cycles, but as long as the basic concepts themselves contain no cycles, then this kind of reduction is still feasible.

I think this is a critique that other sciences have not been *reduced* to physics, not necessarily that they are not *reducible* to physics. I use 'reduction' in the latter sense.

I imagine one day that we'll have a kind of 'meta-theory' of science which explains the scientific process itself (how science itself works to generate theories, etc.), from information to culture to sociology to psychology to neurology to biology to .... etc. In fact, I think this should probably be a major goal of science to develop such a theory. Ideas of information would be key to such a theory.

We already have at least one algorithm (which is logic) which describes at least one kind of evolution. I don't think we're very far away from developing a thorough logical/algorithmic description of all known kinds of evolution.

In principle, they are. But in practice, there are useful heuristics and abstractions that make multiple branches of science worthwhile. Even within physics you have all sorts of sub-divisions already, from astrophysics to fluid dynamics to quantum, etc.

I don't see it that way. A car engine is reducible to pistons and valves and whatnot, but that doesn't mean that it ceases to be something functionally 'more' than its parts, when assembled as a car engine. Reducing in my view means reducing fundamental assumptions; reducing like Occam's Razor reduces. No information is lost. Like lossless compression reduces the length of a message without losing any information.

Your usage of it does not appear to match mine. At least that's how it appears to me. Any objections to my usage of it?

 

I personally use it to represent my worldview of scientific monism.  In a sense, it is an easy way to label everything such that science can touch it.  In other words, instead of saying I am a naturalist, I use physicalist so that I am actually claiming something positive about what it means to be 'natural.'  Until this thread I didn't think it was a big deal to do so, as in 'everything is made of matter, which is energy, so my monistic substance is energy, which is best described by physics,' was my thought process behind labeling myself a physicalist.

 

Actually, while digging through some wiki articles, it seems that in philosophy 'physical' is more akin to 'scientifically described' than it is to 'described by physics alone.'  This is kind of my position, that physicalism is scientific naturalism.

Actually, that's a joke comic, it's only superficially true. It emphasises that Maths and Physics are at the base of all sciences and this is essentially an accurate portrayal but I wouldn't take every detail of the depiction to heart.

However, it is possible to answer your question fairly directly as Mathematics, like Logic and Linguistics, is a formalism of applied consistency.

Well it is still a stupid term to use, as I have come to expect from philosophy, because it hangs on to so many outdated  concepts.

I am not rebelling against it, since I don't regard it as something with much of any use to contribute to knowledge and understanding, with any authority that I have any respect for. I am happy to simply ignore it, except where people who still take to any extent seriously bring it up.

The most serious downside of philosophy is that it perpetuates way too many outdated modes of thinking. And insofar as it is not like science, it is of little value to me. I find most value where discussions on the fringes of science, or just beyond, use what is arguably a more philosophical style discourse to probe ideas beyond what we have so far established. Otherwise it is to me mostly more-or-less pointless word games, as your description seems to suggest, although you will disagree no doubt about "pointless".

I think reality as revealed by science is shown to be way too complex and subtle, and in many cases counter-intuitive, to be addressed by non-empirical speculation - we have largely exhausted the finite set of possibilities we can generate just within our minds - we need the constant input of data and observations from our ever more subtle and sensitive instruments, to allow reality to continually throw completely unexpected new information at us, which in turn provides the raw material of thought to generate and incorporate ideas that we would be unlikely to come up with in millennia of philosophical rehashing of the same old concepts. May I suggest Quantum Mechanics and Relativity as obvious examples. 

There is a sense in which I can imagine 'reducible' being a reasonable term, but not if it assumes no loss of information. It is OK to use it when 'reducing' one subject to another if you acknowledge that you are throwing away something in the process, which makes the process of questionable value in most cases. I am sure there are other contexts where it makes perfect sense. But in this context of relating different areas of study, it is irrelevant or way too simplistic too be useful - the relationships are much more complex, and it is not just a matter of terminology.

I have read much of Dennett, and I cannot honestly recalling finding any 'philosopher speak' which particularly offended me.

Richard Carrier commented years back on an RRS show that Philosophy gave far to much reverence to old ideas and their originators, and I certainly agree. It would be like Science still incorporating phlogiston theory into Thermodynamics. 

There, I needed an excuse for that rant...

Applied logic requires conscious intelligence to apply the logic. 

No, Heraclitus was making a metaphysical argument based on an empirical observation - namely, that the river is in a constant state of flux. Our concept of a "river" is an abstraction and does not really represent the true nature of reality.

But Heraclitus was making a metaphysical argument. 

Okay. Provide an explanation that resolves the problem.

Okay. This is basically saying that physical events are objective phenomena while mental events are subjective phenomena. 

This depends on what you want or desire. If you desire a physical object, then you would point to a physical object.

Nonreductive physicalism constitutes a form of dualism - more specifically, "property dualism."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_dualism