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  1. Space Emergence in Contemporary Physics: Why We Do Not Need Fundamentality, Layers of Reality and Emergence.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2018 - Disputatio 10 (49):71-95.
    ‘Space does not exist fundamentally: it emerges from a more fundamental non-spatial structure.’ This intriguing claim appears in various research programs in contemporary physics. Philosophers of physics tend to believe that this claim entails either that spacetime does not exist, or that it is derivatively real. In this article, I introduce and defend a third metaphysical interpretation of the claim: reductionism about space. I argue that, as a result, there is no need to subscribe to fundamentality, layers of reality and (...)
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  • Spacetime is as spacetime does.Vincent Lam & Christian Wüthrich - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 64:39-51.
    Theories of quantum gravity generically presuppose or predict that the reality underlying relativistic spacetimes they are describing is significantly non-spatiotemporal. On pain of empirical incoherence, approaches to quantum gravity must establish how relativistic spacetime emerges from their non-spatiotemporal structures. We argue that in order to secure this emergence, it is sufficient to establish that only those features of relativistic spacetimes functionally relevant in producing empirical evidence must be recovered. In order to complete this task, an account must be given of (...)
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  • Approximation and Idealization: Why the Difference Matters.John D. Norton - 2012 - Philosophy of Science 79 (2):207-232.
    It is proposed that we use the term “approximation” for inexact description of a target system and “idealization” for another system whose properties also provide an inexact description of the target system. Since systems generated by a limiting process can often have quite unexpected, even inconsistent properties, familiar limit systems used in statistical physics can fail to provide idealizations, but are merely approximations. A dominance argument suggests that the limiting idealizations of statistical physics should be demoted to approximations.
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  • Effective Spacetime: Understanding Emergence in Effective Field Theory and Quantum Gravity.Karen Crowther - 2016 - Cham: Springer.
    This book discusses the notion that quantum gravity may represent the "breakdown" of spacetime at extremely high energy scales. If spacetime does not exist at the fundamental level, then it has to be considered "emergent", in other words an effective structure, valid at low energy scales. The author develops a conception of emergence appropriate to effective theories in physics, and shows how it applies (or could apply) in various approaches to quantum gravity, including condensed matter approaches, discrete approaches, and loop (...)
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  • Stating structural realism: mathematics‐first approaches to physics and metaphysics.David Wallace - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):345-378.
    I respond to the frequent objection that structural realism fails to sharply state an alternative to the standard predicate-logic, object / property / relation, way of doing metaphysics. The approach I propose is based on what I call a ‘math-first’ approach to physical theories (close to the so-called ‘semantic view of theories') where the content of a physical theory is to be understood primarily in terms of its mathematical structure and the representational relations it bears to physical systems, rather than (...)
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  • The Metaphysics of Super‐Substantivalism.Dennis Lehmkuhl - 2018 - Noûs 52 (1):24-46.
    Recent decades have seen a revived interest in super-substantivalism, the idea that spacetime is the only fundamental substance and matter some kind of aspect, property or consequence of spacetime structure. However, the metaphysical debate so far has misidentified a particular variant of super-substantivalism with the position per se. I distinguish between a super-substantival core commitment and different ways of fleshing it out. I then investigate how general relativity and alternative spacetime theories square with the different variants of super-substantivalism.
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  • Emergence without limits: The case of phonons.Alexander Franklin & Eleanor Knox - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 64 (C):68-78.
    Recent discussions of emergence in physics have focussed on the use of limiting relations, and often particularly on singular or asymptotic limits. We discuss a putative example of emergence that does not fit into this narrative: the case of phonons. These quasi-particles have some claim to be emergent, not least because the way in which they relate to the underlying crystal is almost precisely analogous to the way in which quantum particles relate to the underlying quantum field theory. But there (...)
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  • Inter-theory Relations in Quantum Gravity: Correspondence, Reduction and Emergence.Karen Crowther - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 63:74-85.
    Relationships between current theories, and relationships between current theories and the sought theory of quantum gravity (QG), play an essential role in motivating the need for QG, aiding the search for QG, and defining what would count as QG. Correspondence is the broad class of inter-theory relationships intended to demonstrate the necessary compatibility of two theories whose domains of validity overlap, in the overlap regions. The variety of roles that correspondence plays in the search for QG are illustrated, using examples (...)
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  • Effective spacetime geometry.Eleanor Knox - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 44 (3):346-356.
    I argue that the need to understand spacetime structure as emergent in quantum gravity is less radical and surprising it might appear. A clear understanding of the link between general relativity's geometrical structures and empirical geometry reveals that this empirical geometry is exactly the kind of thing that could be an effective and emergent matter. Furthermore, any theory with torsion will involve an effective geometry, even though these theories look, at first glance, like theories with straightforward spacetime geometry. As it's (...)
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  • Dualities and emergent gravity: Gauge/gravity duality.Sebastian de Haro - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 59:109-125.
    In this paper I develop a framework for relating dualities and emergence: two notions that are close to each other but also exclude one another. I adopt the conception of duality as 'isomorphism', from the physics literature, cashing it out in terms of three conditions. These three conditions prompt two conceptually different ways in which a duality can be modified to make room for emergence; and I argue that this exhausts the possibilities for combining dualities and emergence. I apply this (...)
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  • Emerging into the rainforest: Emergence and special science ontology.Alexander Franklin & Katie Robertson - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (4):1-26.
    Scientific realists don’t standardly discriminate between, say, biology and fundamental physics when deciding whether the evidence and explanatory power warrant the inclusion of new entities in our ontology. As such, scientific realists are committed to a lush rainforest of special science kinds (Ross, 2000). Viruses certainly inhabit this rainforest – their explanatory power is overwhelming – but viruses’ properties can be explained from the bottom up: reductive explanations involving amino acids are generally available. However, reduction has often been taken to (...)
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  • Emergence in holographic scenarios for gravity.Dennis Dieks, Jeroen van Dongen & Sebastian de Haro - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 52 (Part B):203-216.
    'Holographic' relations between theories have become a main theme in quantum gravity research. These relations entail that a theory without gravity is equivalent to a gravitational theory with an extra spatial dimension. The idea of holography was first proposed in 1993 by Gerard 't Hooft on the basis of his studies of evaporating black holes. Soon afterwards the holographic 'AdS/CFT' duality was introduced, which since has been heavily studied in the string theory community and beyond. Recently, Erik Verlinde has proposed (...)
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  • Abstraction and its Limits: Finding Space For Novel Explanation.Eleanor Knox - 2016 - Noûs 50 (1):41-60.
    Several modern accounts of explanation acknowledge the importance of abstraction and idealization for our explanatory practice. However, once we allow a role for abstraction, questions remain. I ask whether the relation between explanations at different theoretical levels should be thought of wholly in terms of abstraction, and argue that changes of the quantities in terms of which we describe a system can lead to novel explanations that are not merely abstractions of some more detailed picture. I use the example of (...)
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  • Scientific Reduction.Raphael van Riel & Robert Van Gulick - 2014 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • The first-personal argument against physicalism.Christian List - manuscript
    The aim of this paper is to discuss a seemingly straightforward argument against physicalism which, despite being implicit in much of the philosophical debate about consciousness, has not received the attention it deserves (compared to other, better-known “epistemic”, “modal”, and “conceivability” arguments). This is the argument from the non-supervenience of the first-personal (and indexical) facts on the third-personal (and non-indexical) ones. This non-supervenience, together with the assumption that the physical facts (as conventionally understood) are third-personal, entails that some facts – (...)
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  • In Search of the Holy Grail: How to Reduce the Second Law of Thermodynamics.Katie Robertson - 2022 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (4):987-1020.
    The search for the statistical mechanical underpinning of thermodynamic irreversibility has so far focussed on the spontaneous approach to equilibrium. But this is the search for the underpinning of what Brown and Uffink have dubbed the ‘minus first law’ of thermodynamics. In contrast, the second law tells us that certain interventions on equilibrium states render the initial state ‘irrecoverable’. In this article, I discuss the unusual nature of processes in thermodynamics, and the type of irreversibility that the second law embodies. (...)
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  • Invariance, intrinsicality and perspicuity.Caspar Jacobs - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-17.
    It is now standard to interpret symmetry-related models of physical theories as representing the same state of affairs. Recently, a debate has sprung up around the question when this interpretational move is warranted. In particular, Møller-Nielsen :1253–1264, 2017) has argued that one is only allowed to interpret symmetry-related models as physically equivalent when one has a characterisation of their common content. I disambiguate two versions of this claim. On the first, a perspicuous interpretation is required: an account of the models’ (...)
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  • Reduction, Emergence, and Renormalization.Jeremy Butterfield - 2014 - Journal of Philosophy 111 (1):5-49.
    In previous work, I described several examples combining reduction and emergence: where reduction is understood a la Ernest Nagel, and emergence is understood as behaviour that is novel. Here, my aim is again to reconcile reduction and emergence, for a case which is apparently more problematic than those I treated before: renormalization. My main point is that renormalizability being a generic feature at accessible energies gives us a conceptually unified family of Nagelian reductions. That is worth saying since philosophers tend (...)
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  • Theoretical Relicts: Progress, Reduction, and Autonomy.Katie Robertson & Alastair Wilson - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    When once-successful physical theories are abandoned, common wisdom has it that their characteristic theoretical entities are abandoned with them: examples include phlogiston, light rays, Newtonian forces, Euclidean space. But sometimes a theory sees ongoing use, despite being superseded. What should scientific realists say about the characteristic entities of the theories in such cases? The standard answer is that these ‘theoretical relicts’ are merely useful fictions. In this paper we offer a different answer. We start by distinguishing horizontal reduction (in which (...)
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  • Laws, causation and dynamics at different levels.Jeremy Butterfield - 2012 - Interface Focus 2 (1):101-114.
    I have two main aims. The first is general, and more philosophical. The second is specific, and more closely related to physics. The first aim is to state my general views about laws and causation at different ”levels’. The main task is to understand how the higher levels sustain notions of law and causation that ”ride free’ of reductions to the lower level or levels. I endeavour to relate my views to those of other symposiasts. The second aim is to (...)
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  • Taking Reductionism to the Limit: How to Rebut the Antireductionist Argument from Infinite Limits.Juha Saatsi & Alexander Reutlinger - 2017 - Philosophy of Science (3):455-482.
    This paper analyses the anti-reductionist argument from renormalisation group explanations of universality, and shows how it can be rebutted if one assumes that the explanation in question is captured by the counterfactual dependence account of explanation.
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  • Local reduction in physics.Joshua Rosaler - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 50 (C):54-69.
    A conventional wisdom about the progress of physics holds that successive theories wholly encompass the domains of their predecessors through a process that is often called reduction. While certain influential accounts of inter-theory reduction in physics take reduction to require a single "global" derivation of one theory's laws from those of another, I show that global reductions are not available in all cases where the conventional wisdom requires reduction to hold. However, I argue that a weaker "local" form of reduction, (...)
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  • The strong emergence of molecular structure.Vanessa A. Seifert - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (3):1-25.
    One of the most plausible and widely discussed examples of strong emergence is molecular structure. The only detailed account of it, which has been very influential, is due to Robin Hendry and is formulated in terms of downward causation. This paper explains Hendry’s account of the strong emergence of molecular structure and argues that it is coherent only if one assumes a diachronic reflexive notion of downward causation. However, in the context of this notion of downward causation, the strong emergence (...)
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  • Flat Emergence.Olivier Sartenaer - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (S1):225-250.
    The main contention of this article is that current approaches to ontological emergence are not comprehensive, in that they share a common bias that make them blind to some conceptual space available to emergence. In this article, I devise an alternative perspective on ontological emergence called ‘flat emergence’, which is free of such a bias. The motivation is twofold: not only does flat emergence constitute another viable way to fulfill the initial emergentist promise, but it also allows for making sense (...)
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  • Conceptual Aspects of Gauge/Gravity Duality.Sebastian De Haro, Daniel R. Mayerson & Jeremy N. Butterfield - 2016 - Foundations of Physics 46 (11):1381-1425.
    We give an introductory review of gauge/gravity duality, and associated ideas of holography, emphasising the conceptual aspects. The opening sections gather the ingredients, viz. anti-de Sitter spacetime, conformal field theory and string theory, that we need for presenting, in Sect. 5, the central and original example: Maldacena’s AdS/CFT correspondence. Sections 6 and 7 develop the ideas of this example, also in applications to condensed matter systems, QCD, and hydrodynamics. Sections 8 and 9 discuss the possible extensions of holographic ideas to (...)
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  • Multiple Realizability from a Causal Perspective.Lauren N. Ross - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (4):640-662.
    This article examines the multiple realizability thesis within a causal framework. The beginnings of this framework are found in Elliott Sober’s “Multiple Realizability Argument against Reduction,”...
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  • Emergence and Reduction Combined in Phase Transitions.Jeremy Butterfield & Nazim Bouatta - unknown
    In another paper, one of us argued that emergence and reduction are compatible, and presented four examples illustrating both. The main purpose of this paper is to develop this position for the example of phase transitions. We take it that emergence involves behaviour that is novel compared with what is expected: often, what is expected from a theory of the system's microscopic constituents. We take reduction as deduction, aided by appropriate definitions. Then the main idea of our reconciliation of emergence (...)
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  • Nagel on reduction.Sahotra Sarkar - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 53:43-56.
    This paper attempts a critical reappraisal of Nagel's (1961, 1970) model of reduction taking into account both traditional criticisms and recent defenses. This model treats reduction as a type of explanation in which a reduced theory is explained by a reducing theory after their relevant representational items have been suitably connected. In accordance with the deductive-nomological model, the explanation is supposed to consist of a logical deduction. Nagel was a pluralist about both the logical form of the connections between the (...)
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  • Emergent quantum indeterminacy.Cristian Mariani - 2021 - Ratio 34 (3):183-192.
    Many features of quantum mechanics (QM) suggest that, at the microscopic level, objects sometimes fail to determinately instantiate their properties. In recent years, many have argued that this phenomenon indicates the existence of an ontological kind of indeterminacy, often called metaphysical indeterminacy, which is supposed to affect the ontology of QM. As insisted by Glick ('Against Quantum Indeterminacy), however, once we look at the major realist approaches to QM we learn that the indeterminacy disappears from the description of the world (...)
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  • As below, so before: ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’ conceptions of spacetime emergence.Karen Crowther - 2020 - Synthese 198 (8):7279-7307.
    Typically, a less fundamental theory, or structure, emerging from a more fundamental one is an example of synchronic emergence. A model emerging from a prior model upon which it nevertheless depends is an example of diachronic emergence. The case of spacetime emergent from quantum gravity and quantum cosmology challenges these two conceptions of emergence. Here, I propose two more-general conceptions of emergence, analogous to the synchronic and diachronic ones, but which are potentially applicable to the case of emergent spacetime: an (...)
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  • Toward an Understanding of Parochial Observables.Benjamin Feintzeig - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:axw010.
    Ruetsche claims that an abstract C*-algebra of observables will not contain all of the physically significant observables for a quantum system with infinitely many degrees of freedom. This would signal that in addition to the abstract algebra, one must use Hilbert space representations for some purposes. I argue to the contrary that there is a way to recover all of the physically significant observables by purely algebraic methods. 1 Introduction2 Preliminaries3 Three Extremist Interpretations3.1 Algebraic imperialism3.2 Hilbert space conservatism3.3 Universalism4 Parochial (...)
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  • Autonomy generalised; or, Why doesn’t physics matter more?Katie Robertson - forthcoming - Ergo.
    In what sense are the special sciences autonomous of fundamental physics? Autonomy is an enduring theme in discussions of the relationship between the special sciences and fundamental physics or, more generally, between higher and lower-level facts. Discussion of ‘autonomy’ often fails to recognise that autonomy admits of degrees; consequently, autonomy is either taken to require full independence, or risk relegation to mere apparent autonomy. In addition, the definition of autonomy used by Fodor, the most famous proponent of the autonomy of (...)
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  • Decoupling emergence and reduction in physics.Karen Crowther - 2015 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 5 (3):419-445.
    An effective theory in physics is one that is supposed to apply only at a given length scale; the framework of effective field theory describes a ‘tower’ of theories each applying at different length scales, where each ‘level’ up is a shorter-scale theory. Owing to subtlety regarding the use and necessity of EFTs, a conception of emergence defined in terms of reduction is irrelevant. I present a case for decoupling emergence and reduction in the philosophy of physics. This paper develops (...)
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  • Infinite Idealizations.John D. Norton - 2012 - Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 17:197-210.
    1. Approximations of arbitrarily large but finite systems are often mistaken for infinite idealizations in statistical and thermal physics. The problem is illustrated by thermodynamically reversible processes. They are approximations of processes requiring arbitrarily long, but finite times to complete, not processes requiring an actual infinity of time.2. The present debate over whether phase transitions comprise a failure of reduction is confounded by a confusion of two senses of “level”: the molecular versus the thermodynamic level and the few component versus (...)
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  • (Re)interpreting E=mc².Federico Benitez, Diego Romero-Maltrana & Pablo Razeto-Barry - 2022 - Foundations of Physics 52 (1):1-19.
    We propose a new interpretation of the equation E=mc² in special relativity by generalizing ideas of ontological emergence to fundamental physics. This allows us to propose that mass, as a property, can be considered to emerge from energy, using a well-known definition of weak ontological emergence. Einstein’s famous equation gains in this way a clearer philosophical interpretation, one that avoids the problems of previous attempts, and is fully consistent with the kinematic properties of special relativity, while yielding fresh insights concerning (...)
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  • Emergence and correspondence for string theory black holes.Jeroen van Dongen, Sebastian De Haro, Manus Visser & Jeremy Butterfield - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 69:112-127.
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  • Two-step emergence: the quantum theory of atoms in molecules as a bridge between quantum mechanics and molecular chemistry.Chérif F. Matta, Olimpia Lombardi & Jesús Jaimes Arriaga - 2020 - Foundations of Chemistry 22 (1):107-129.
    By moving away from the traditional reductionist reading of the quantum theory of atoms in molecules, in this paper we analyze the role played by QTAIM in the relationship between molecular chemistry and quantum mechanics from an emergentist perspective. In particular, we show that such a relationship involves two steps: an intra-domain emergence and an inter-domain emergence. Intra-domain emergence, internal to quantum mechanics, results from the fact that the electron density, from which all the other QTAIM’s concepts are defined, arises (...)
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  • Quantum gravity and the nature of space and time.Keizo Matsubara - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (3):e12405.
    This is a nontechnical overview of how various approaches to quantum gravity suggest modifications to the way we conceptualize space and time. A theory of quantum gravity is needed to reconcile quantum physics with general relativity, our best theory for gravity. The most popular approaches to quantum gravity are string theory and loop quantum gravity. So far, no approach has been empirically successful, and there is no commonly accepted theory. Thus, the conclusions presented here are tentative. Many approaches suggest that (...)
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  • Towards a theory of emergence for the physical sciences.Sebastian De Haro - 2019 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (3):1-52.
    I begin to develop a framework for emergence in the physical sciences. Namely, I propose to explicate ontological emergence in terms of the notion of ‘novel reference’, and of an account of interpretation as a map from theory to world. I then construe ontological emergence as the “failure of the interpretation to mesh” with an appropriate linkage map between theories. Ontological emergence can obtain between theories that have the same extension but different intensions, and between theories that have both different (...)
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  • The emergence of the postgenomic gene.Francesca Bellazzi - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (1):1-21.
    The identity and the existence of genes has been challenged by postgenomic discoveries. Specifically, the consideration of molecular and cellular phenomena in which genes are embedded has proved relevant for their understanding. In response to these challenges, I will argue that the complexity of genetic phenomena supports the weak emergence of genes from the DNA. In Section 2, I will expose what genes are taken to be in the postgenomic world. In Section 3, I will present the relevant account of (...)
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  • Similarity Structure and Emergent Properties.Samuel C. Fletcher - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (2):281-301.
    The concept of emergence is commonly invoked in modern physics but rarely defined. Building on recent influential work by Jeremy Butterfield, I provide precise definitions of emergence concepts as they pertain to properties represented in models, applying them to some basic examples from space-time and thermostatistical physics. The chief formal innovation I employ, similarity structure, consists in a structured set of similarity relations among those models under analysis—and their properties—and is a generalization of topological structure. Although motivated from physics, this (...)
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  • Can Multiple Realisation be Explained?Alexander Franklin - 2021 - Philosophy 96 (1):27-48.
    Multiple realisation prompts the question: how is it that multiple systems all exhibit the same phenomena despite their different underlying properties? In this paper I develop a framework for addressing that question and argue that multiple realisation can be reductively explained. I illustrate this position by applying the framework to a simple example – the multiple realisation of electrical conductivity. I defend my account by addressing potential objections:contra Polger and Shapiro, Batterman, and Sober, I claim that multiple realisation is commonplace, (...)
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  • Explaining Financial Markets in Terms of Complex Systems.Meinard Kuhlmann - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (5):1117-1130.
    Large changes of financial market prices without exogenous causes deviate significantly from the Gaussian behavior of random variables. This indicates that financial markets should be treated as complex systems, for which nonlinear interactions of its subunits/agents are crucial. I focus on how the complex systems perspective impacts the notion of explanations in economics. The mechanistic model seems to fit the bill, but problems surface on closer scrutiny. One characteristic of complex systems is that their behavior is surprisingly independent from microscopic (...)
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  • Deduction and definability in infinite statistical systems.Benjamin H. Feintzeig - 2017 - Synthese 196 (5):1-31.
    Classical accounts of intertheoretic reduction involve two pieces: first, the new terms of the higher-level theory must be definable from the terms of the lower-level theory, and second, the claims of the higher-level theory must be deducible from the lower-level theory along with these definitions. The status of each of these pieces becomes controversial when the alleged reduction involves an infinite limit, as in statistical mechanics. Can one define features of or deduce the behavior of an infinite idealized system from (...)
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  • (1 other version)Models, Idealisations, and Realism.Juha Saatsi - 1st ed. 2016 - In Emiliano Ippoliti, Fabio Sterpetti & Thomas Nickles (eds.), Models and Inferences in Science. Cham: Springer.
    I explore a challenge that idealisations pose to scientific realism and argue that the realist can best accommodate idealisations by capitalising on certain modal features of idealised models that are underwritten by laws of nature.
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  • Spacetime Emergence: Collapsing the Distinction Between Content and Context?Karen Crowther - 2022 - In Shyam Wuppuluri & Ian Stewart (eds.), From Electrons to Elephants and Elections: Exploring the Role of Content and Context. Springer Nature. pp. 379–402.
    Several approaches to developing a theory of quantum gravity suggest that spacetime—as described by general relativity—is not fundamental. Instead, spacetime is supposed to be explained by reference to the relations between more fundamental entities, analogous to `atoms' of spacetime, which themselves are not (fully) spatiotemporal. Such a case may be understood as emergence of \textit{content}: a `hierarchical' case of emergence, where spacetime emerges at a `higher', or less-fundamental, level than its `lower-level' non-spatiotempral basis. But quantum gravity cosmology also presents us (...)
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  • Becoming Large, Becoming Infinite: The Anatomy of Thermal Physics and Phase Transitions in Finite Systems.David A. Lavis, Reimer Kühn & Roman Frigg - 2021 - Foundations of Physics 51 (5):1-69.
    This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the anatomy of both thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, together with the relationships between their constituent parts. Based on this analysis, using the renormalization group and finite-size scaling, we give a definition of a large but finite system and argue that phase transitions are represented correctly, as incipient singularities in such systems. We describe the role of the thermodynamic limit. And we explore the implications of this picture of critical phenomena for the questions of (...)
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  • Introduction: Principles of quantum gravity.Karen Crowther & Dean Rickles - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 46 (2):135-141.
    In this introduction, we describe the rationale behind this special issue on Principles of Quantum Gravity. We explain what we mean by ‘principles’ and relate this to the various contributions. Finally, we draw out some general themes that can be found running throughout these contributions.
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  • Appearing Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Quantum Gravity.Karen Crowther - 2014 - Dissertation, University of Sydney
    Quantum gravity is understood as a theory that, in some sense, unifies general relativity (GR) and quantum theory, and is supposed to replace GR at extremely small distances (high-energies). It may be that quantum gravity represents the breakdown of spacetime geometry described by GR. The relationship between quantum gravity and spacetime has been deemed ``emergence'', and the aim of this thesis is to investigate and explicate this relation. After finding traditional philosophical accounts of emergence to be inappropriate, I develop a (...)
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  • Fundamentality, Scale, and the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect.Elay Shech & Patrick McGivern - 2019 - Erkenntnis 86 (6):1411-1430.
    We examine arguments for distinguishing between ontological and epistemological concepts of fundamentality, focusing in particular on the role that scale plays in these concepts. Using the fractional quantum Hall effect as a case study, we show that we can draw a distinction between ontologically fundamental and non-fundamental theories without insisting that it is only the fundamental theories that get the ontology right: there are cases where non-fundamental theories involve distinct ontologies that better characterize real systems than fundamental ones do. In (...)
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