Local reductionism purports to defend a middle ground in the debate about the epistemic status of testimony-based beliefs. It does so by acknowledging the practical ineliminability of testimony as a source of knowledge, while insisting that such an acknowledgment need not entail a default-acceptance view, according to which there exists an irreducible warrant for accepting testimony. The presen...

The consensus view in philosophy of science is that reductionism is dead. One reason for this is that the deductive nomological (DN) model of explanation, on which classical reductionism depends, is widely regarded as indefensible. I argue that the DN model is inessential to the reductionist framework, and that mechanism provides a better framework for thinking about reductionism. But this runs...

Reply by Moyer: The foregoing thought-provoking response to my inaugural IJTMB Research Section editorial takes issue with the way I have conceptualized “reductionism,” and with my position on its role and value in massage therapy (MT) research. I thank the author, Dylan Lott, for opening this dialogue, and for giving me the opportunity to clarify my position. Reductionism, notes The Oxford Com...