Greedy reductionism is a term coined by Daniel Dennett, in the book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, to distinguish between acceptable and erroneous forms of reductionism. Whereas reductionism means explaining a thing in terms of what it reduces to, greedy reductionism comes when the thing we are trying to understand is explained away instead of explained, so that we fail to gain any additional understanding of the original target. Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942) is a prominent American philosopher. ... cover Darwins Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (1995) is a controversial book by Daniel Dennett that argues that Darwinian processes are the central organising force not only in biology (which is not controversial), but also in most other aspects of the Universe, including the human mind... Reductionism in philosophy describes a number of related, contentious theories that hold, very roughly, that the nature of complex things can always be reduced to (be explained by) simpler or more fundamental things. ...

For example, we can reduce temperature to average kinetic motion without denying that temperature exists, so this is good reductionism. In contrast, when we consider the question of why clicking on a hyperlink takes us to one website and not another, any answer that says that it all comes down to electrons and that hyperlinks don't really exist anyhow is a greedy attempt to explain away the problem without solving it. Temperature is the physical property of a system which underlies the common notions of hot and cold; the material with the higher temperature is said to be hotter. ... A hyperlink, or simply a link, is a reference in a hypertext document to another document or other resource. ... Properties The electron is a fundamental subatomic particle which carries a negative electric charge. ...

Another example of greedy reductionism is B. F. Skinner's behaviorism, which not only reduced all mental attributes, such as beliefs and feelings, to behavior, but went on to deny that anything mental exists, thus failing to answer the questions it was supposed to. Instead of being able to explain behavior in terms of things such as beliefs, it casts everything in terms of conditioning. This example is particularly relevant because Dennett himself can be categorized as a type of behaviorist, but not the extreme sort who denies what they're supposed to be explaining. Burrhus Frederic Skinner Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist and author. ... Behaviorism or behaviourism (not to be confused with behavioralism in political science) is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior can be researched scientifically without recourse to inner mental states. ...

In Consciousness Explained, Dennett argued that, without denying that human consciousness exists, we can understand it as coming about from the coordinated activity of many components in the brain that are themselves unconscious. In response, critics accused him of explaining away consciousness because he disputes the existence of certain conceptions of consciousness that he considers overblown and incompatible with what is physically possible. This is likely what motivated Dennett to make the greedy/good distinction in his follow-up book, to freely admit that reductionism can go overboard while pointing out that not all reductionism goes this far. Cover of Consciousness Explained Consciousness Explained (published 1991) is a book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett which attempts to explain how consciousness arises from interaction of physical and cognitive processes in the brain. ... Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise such key features as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ... The unconscious mind (or subconscious) is the aspect (or puported aspect) of the mind of which we are not directly conscious or aware. ...

The opposite extreme from greedy reductionism is throwing up your hands and denying that a reductionistic analysis of a complex system can work at all. This tactic is found in some theories that say consciousness is an emergent epiphenomenon that cannot be further reduced. Dennett's response is to call such notions mysterian. Emergent materialism asserts that we will never understand the mechanism of emergence: it will always seem to us like emergence is magical. ... An epiphenomenon is a secondary phenomenon that occurs alongside a primary phenomenon. ... New Mysterianism is a philosophy proposing that certain problems (in particular, consciousness) will never be explained or at the least cannot be explained by the human mind at its current evolutionary stage. ...

See also

• Holism
• Golden hammer
• Monism
• Reductionism

can anyone explain this in layman's terms? Holism (from holos, a Greek word meaning whole) is the idea that the properties of a system cannot be determined or explained by the sum of its components alone. ... A golden hammer is any tool, technology, paradigm, snake oil, buzzword or similar whose proponents enthusiastically sing its praises, predicting that it will solve multiple problems, including some obviously not amenable to the proposed solution. ... Monism is the metaphysical and theological view that there is only one principle, essence, substance or energy in this Universe. ... Reductionism in philosophy describes a number of related, contentious theories that hold, very roughly, that the nature of complex things can always be reduced to (be explained by) simpler or more fundamental things. ...