The Reduction Problem In The Research Of Mind

This essay did a systematic research on reductionism in philosophy of mind by referring to the overseas latest research results.The discussion on the reduction is now one of the hotspots in the study of philosophy of mind.Till now many foreign philosophers of mind and scientists have concentrated on this area.And they have already raised some relative mature theory about the construction and rewriting of models of reduction,as well as some concepts related to reductionism,such as emergence,mechanistic explanation and supervenience.While the national research in this aspect has just started,and is mainly on the introduction of the results done by foreign researchers.So my paper tries to sort out the various reductive approaches to the mind-body problems and the development of the new wave reductionism.And especially tries to discuss if NWR can solve the problem of multiple realizations or the "hard problem" of consciousness,namely qualia and the limitations it has.The essay consists of three parts:The first part is about the meaning of reductionism,the standard model of reduction and the historical background of the debate of reductionism and anti-reductionism in biology.Because the meaning of reduction often causes much confusion,this part firstly classified reductionism into ontological reductionism and epistemological reductionism in order to make the problem clear.Then mainly introduced the classical reductive model of Nagel;the second part introduces the mind-body problem and the debate of the different approaches to it.Being different from the reductionism in physics,the standard model of reduction has two major problems in the mind reduction domain.And the new wave reductionism advanced the old one just by corrected it partly.So the whole essay and this part mainly focused on this issue;the third part gives a simple introduction to some concepts related with reduction.It is especially important that, compared to the law explanations of the physical theories,the scientific explanations and reductions in psychology is somewhat a mechanical explanation.Though the debate between reductionism and anti-reductionism of the mind-body problem was not fully expatiated,and no well-formulated and all-round model of mind reduction was put forward in the end.But I am in favor of the heuristic identity theory holding that the reductionism will be established in the results of scientific practice and will greatly promote psychology and other related science.