Reductionism in the philosophy of mind

Reductionism in the philosophy of mind is one of the options available to those who think that humans and the human mind are part of the natural physical world. Reductionists seek to integrate the mind and mental phenomena – fear, pain, anger and the like – with the natural world by showing them to be natural phenomena. Their inspirations are the famous reductions of science: of the heat of gases to molecular motion, of lightning to electric discharge, of the gene to the DNA molecule and the like. Reductionists hope to show a similar relationship between mental kinds and neurophysiological kinds.