According to physicalism, all matter is a composed of the fundamental physical constituents of physics, i.e., fermions and bosons. In addition, all processes of biology and psychology are determined by the fundamental physical processes of the particles. One might therefore expect that, we should be able to explain biological process by these fundamental processes. However, we have shown with cryptological reasoning that even when physicalism holds ontologically, there might be complex barriers that hinder reduction epistemologically (Herzog et al., 2023). These results also challenge the assumption that we can easily map neural processes to psychological ones (Ozkirli et al., 2025).
Mind-independent objects, such as apples and bikes, are central in our everyday experience and scientific worldview. Too bad that they do not exist (Herzog, 2022).
Publications
Epistemology- Ozkirli A, Herzog MH, Jastrzębowska MA (2025). Computational complexity as a potential limitation on brain–behaviour mapping. European Journal of Neuroscience, 61(1), e16636.
- Herzog MH, Doerig A, Sachse C (2023). Why computational complexity may set impenetrable barriers for epistemic reductionism. Synthese, 202(5), p136.
Ontology
- Herzog MH (2022). The irreducibility of vision: Gestalt, crowding and the fundamentals of vision. Vision, 6(2):35, p1-17.