[DRAFT] Paper presented at Congress for Doctoral Researchers in Philosophy, Tampere University, 25.–27.10. 2021. The Paper strives to flesh out Gilbert Simondon's notion of information as a multifaced process (transduction-modulation-organization) from the viewpoint of living (/biological) beings.

In this paper I argue that many scholars involved in the contemporary free will debates have underappreciated the philosophical appeal of agent causation because the resources of contemporary emergentism have not been adequately introduced into the discussion. Whereas I agree that agent causation’s main problem has to do with its intelligibility, particularly with respect to the issue of how substances can be causally relevant, I argue that the notion of substance causation can be clearly articulated from an emergentist framework. According (...) to my proposal, a free agent is _a causally powerful substance that emerges in an anomic way from her constitutive mental events_, downwardly constraining, selecting and, in this way, having control on them. As we shall see, this particular concept of agent causation not only makes sense of the deep insight behind agent libertarianism, but it also provides us with the resources to solve some of the main objections that have been raised against it. It is true that here I cannot develop a complete defense of the evidential credentials of emergentism. Still, even if the considerations that follow do not serve to convince detractors of agent causal libertarian accounts of free will, they do suggest that libertarian agent causation is more promising than is typically acknowledged. (shrink)

Enactivism advances an understanding of cognition rooted in the dynamic interaction between an embodied agent and their environment, whilst new mechanism suggests that cognition is explained by uncovering the organised components underlying cognitive capacities. On the face of it, the mechanistic model’s emphasis on localisable and decomposable mechanisms, often neural in nature, runs contrary to the enactivist ethos. Despite appearances, this paper argues that mechanistic explanations of cognition, being neither narrow nor reductive, and compatible with plausible iterations of ideas like (...) emergence and downward causation, are congruent with enactivism. Attention to enactivist ideas, moreover, may serve as a heuristic for mechanistic investigations of cognition. Nevertheless, I show how enactivism and approaches that prioritise mechanistic modelling may diverge in starting assumptions about the nature of cognitive phenomena, such as where the constitutive boundaries of cognition lie. (shrink)

Applied Evolutionary Epistemology is a scientific-philosophical theory that defines evolution as the set of phenomena whereby units evolve at levels of ontological hierarchies by mechanisms and processes. This theory also provides a methodology to study evolution, namely, studying evolution involves identifying the units that evolve, the levels at which they evolve, and the mechanisms and processes whereby they evolve. Identifying units and levels of evolution in turn requires the development of ontological hierarchy theories, and examining mechanisms and processes necessitates theorizing (...) about causality. Together, hierarchy and causality theories explain how biorealities form and diversify with time. This paper analyzes how Applied EE redefines both hierarchy and causality theories in the light of the recent explosion of network approaches to causal reasoning associated with studies on reticulate and macroevolution. Causality theories have often been framed from within a rigid, ladder-like hierarchy theory where the rungs of the ladder represent the different levels, and the elements on the rungs represent the evolving units. Causality then is either defined reductionistically as an upward movement along the strands of a singular hierarchy, or holistically as a downward movement along that same hierarchy. Upward causation theories thereby analyze causal processes in time, i.e. over the course of natural history or phylogenetically, as Darwin and the founders of the Modern Synthesis intended. Downward causation theories analyze causal processes in space, ontogenetically or ecologically, as the current eco-evo-devo schools are evidencing. This work demonstrates how macroevolution and reticulate evolution theories add to the complexity by examining reticulate causal processes in space–time, and the interactional hierarchies that such studies bring forth introduce a new form of causation that is here called reticulate causation. Reticulate causation occurs between units and levels belonging to different as well as to the same ontological hierarchies. This article concludes that beyond recognizing the existence of multiple units, levels, and mechanisms or processes of evolution, also the existence of multiple kinds of evolutionary causation as well as the existence of multiple evolutionary hierarchies needs to be acknowledged. This furthermore implies that evolution is a pluralistic process divisible into different kinds. (shrink)

Contemporary biological research has suggested that some host–microbiome multispecies systems (referred to as “holobionts”) can in certain circumstances evolve as unique biological individual, thus being a unit of selection in evolution. If this is so, then it is arguably the case that some biological adaptations have evolved at the level of the multispecies system, what we call hologenomic adaptations. However, no research has yet been devoted to investigating their nature, or how these adaptations can be distinguished from adaptations at the (...) species-level (genomic adaptations). In this paper, we cover this gap by investigating the nature of hologenomic adaptations. By drawing on the case of the evolution of sanguivory diet in vampire bats, we argue that a trait constitutes a hologenomic adaptation when its evolution can only be explained if the holobiont is considered the biological individual that manifests this adaptation, while the bacterial taxa that bear the trait are only opportunistic beneficiaries of it. We then use the philosophical notions of emergence and inter-identity to explain the nature of this form of individuality and argue why it is special of holobionts. Overall, our paper illustrates how the use of philosophical concepts can illuminate scientific discussions, in the trend of what has recently been called metaphysics of biology. (shrink)

Contemporary evolutionary biology comprises a plural landscape of multiple co-existent conceptual frameworks and strenuous voices that disagree on the nature and scope of evolutionary theory. Since the mid-eighties, some of these conceptual frameworks have denounced the ontologies of the Modern Synthesis and of the updated Standard Theory of Evolution as unfinished or even flawed. In this paper, we analyze and compare two of those conceptual frameworks, namely Niles Eldredge’s Hierarchy Theory of Evolution (with its extended ontology of evolutionary entities) and (...) the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (with its proposal of an extended ontology of evolutionary processes), in an attempt to map some epistemic bridges (e.g. compatible views of causation; niche construction) and some conceptual rifts (e.g. extra-genetic inheritance; different perspectives on macroevolution; contrasting standpoints held in the “externalism–internalism” debate) that exist between them. This paper seeks to encourage theoretical, philosophical and historiographical discussions about pluralism or the possible unification of contemporary evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Universal Darwinism provides a methodology to study the evolution of anatomical form and sociocultural behavior that centers on defining the units and levels of selection, and it identifies the conditions whereby natural selection operates. In previous work, I have examined how this selection-focused evolutionary epistemology may be universalized to include theories that associate with an extended synthesis. Applied evolutionary epistemology is a metatheoretical framework that understands any and all kinds of evolution as phenomena where units evolve by mechanisms at levels (...) of an ontological hierarchy; and it provides three heuristics to search for these units, levels and mechanisms. The heuristics are applicable to language and sociocultural evolution, and here, we give an in-depth analysis of how the unit-heuristic can be implemented into language origin and evolution studies. The importance of developing hierarchy theories is also more fully explained. (shrink)

The terms ‘verification’ and ‘validation’ are widely used in science, both in the natural and the social sciences. They are extensively used in simulation, often associated with the need to evaluate models in different stages of the simulation development process. Frequently, terminological ambiguities arise when researchers conflate, along the simulation development process, the technical meanings of both terms with other meanings found in the philosophy of science and the social sciences. This article considers the problem of verification and validation in (...) social science simulation along five perspectives: The reasons to address terminological issues in simulation; the meaning of the terms in the philosophical sense of the problem of “truth”; the observation that some debates about these terms in simulation are inadvertently more terminological than epistemological; the meaning of the terms in the technical context of the simulation development process; and finally, a comprehensive outline of the relation between terminology used in simulation, different types of models used in the development process and different epistemological perspectives. (shrink)

The idea of levels of organization plays a central role in the philosophy of the life sciences. In this article, I first examine the explanatory goals that have motivated accounts of levels of organization. I then show that the most state-of-the-art and scientifically plausible account of levels of organization, the account of levels of mechanism proposed by Bechtel and Craver, is fundamentally problematic. Finally, I argue that the explanatory goals can be reached by adopting a deflationary approach, where levels of (...) organization give way to more well-defined and fundamental notions, such as scale and composition. (shrink)

The tradition of pragmatism has, especially since Dewey, been characterized by a commitment to nonreductive naturalism. The notion of emergence, popular in the early decades of the twentieth century and currently re-emerging as a central concept in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, may be useful in explicating that commitment. The present paper discusses the issue of the reality of emergent properties, drawing particular attention to a pragmatic way of approaching this issue. The reality of emergents can be defended as (...) a pragmatically-useful ontological commitment; hence, pragmatism can be employed as a tool in the debate over the structure and reality of emergence. This strategy of justifying ontological commitments is examined through historical and systematic discussions of the pragmatist tradition. It turns out, among other things, that while classical pragmatists did not specify any technical notion of emergence in the contemporary sense, their non-reductively naturalist views are relevant to the more recent emergence discussions -- especially because they rejected the metaphysical realism typical of today’s ontologically-oriented emergence theories. (shrink)

Human behavior is the joint product of (i) contingencies of survival responsible for natural selection, and (ii) contingencies of reinforcement responsible for the repertoires of individuals, including (iii) the special contingencies maintained by an evolved social environment. Selection by consequences is a causal mode found only in living things, or in machines made by living things. It was first recognized in natural selection: Reproduction, a first consequence, led to the evolution of cells, organs, and organisms reproducing themselves under increasingly diverse (...) conditions. The behavior functioned well, however, only under conditions similar to those under which it was selected.Reproduction under a wider range of consequences became possible with the evolution of processes through which organisms acquired behavior appropriate to novel environments. One of these, operant conditioning, is a second kind of selection by consequences: New responses could be strengthened by events which followed them. When the selecting consequences are the same, operant conditioning and natural selection work together redundantly. But because a species which quickly acquires behavior appropriate to an environment has less need for an innate repertoire, operant conditioning could replace as well as supplement the natural selection of behavior.Social behavior is within easy range of natural selection, because other members are one of the most stable features of the environment of a species. The human species presumably became more social when its vocal musculature came under operant control. Verbal behavior greatly increased the importance of a third kind of selection by consequences, the evolution of social environments or cultures. The effect on the group, and not the reinforcing consequences for individual members, is responsible for the evolution of culture. (shrink)

Physics and chemistry underlie the nature of all the world around us, including human brains. Consequently some suggest that in causal terms, physics is all there is. However, we live in an environment dominated by objects embodying the outcomes of intentional design (buildings, computers, teaspoons). The present day subject of physics has nothing to say about the intentionality resulting in existence of such objects, even though this intentionality is clearly causally effective. This paper examines the claim that the underlying physics (...) uniquely causally determines what happens, even though we cannot predict the outcome. It suggests that what occurs is the contextual emergence of complexity: the higher levels in the hierarchy of complexity have autonomous causal powers, functionally independent of lower level processes. This is possible because top-down causation takes place as well as bottom-up action, with higher level contexts determining the outcome of lower level functioning and even modifying the nature of lower level constituents. Stored information plays a key role, resulting in non-linear dynamics that is non-local in space and time. Brain functioning is causally affected by abstractions such as the value of money and the theory of the laser. These are realised as brain states in individuals, but are not equivalent to them. Consequently physics per se cannot causally determine the outcome of human creativity, rather it creates the possibility space allowing human intelligence to function autonomously. The challenge to physics is to develop a realistic description of causality in truly complex hierarchical structures, with top-down causation and memory effects allowing autonomous higher levels of order to emerge with genuine causal powers. (shrink)

The methodological nonreductionism of contemporary biology opens an interesting discussion on the level of ontology and the philosophy of nature. The theory of emergence (EM), and downward causation (DC) in particular, bring a new set of arguments challenging not only methodological, but also ontological and causal reductionism. This argumentation provides a crucial philosophical foundation for the science/theology dialogue. However, a closer examination shows that proponents of EM do not present a unified and consistent definition of DC. Moreover, they find it (...) difficult to prove that higher-order properties can be causally significant without violating the causal laws that operate at lower physical levels. They also face the problem of circularity and incoherence in their explanation. In our article we show that these problems can be overcome only if DC is understood in terms of formal rather than physical (efficient) causality. This breakdown of causal monism in science opens a way to the retrieval of the fourfold Aristotelian notion of causality. (shrink)

Recent years have seen renewed interest in the emergence issue. The contemporary debate, in contrast with that of past times, has to do not so much with the mind–body problem as with the relationship between the physical and other domains; mostly with the biological domain. One of the main sources of this renewed interest is the study of complex and, in general, far-from-equilibrium self-preserving systems, which seem to fulfil one of the necessary conditions for an entity to be emergent; namely, (...) that its causal powers are not predictable from the causal powers of basic physical properties. However, I argue that much of the current emergentism debate has misfired by focusing on the interpretation of self-maintaining systems. In contrast, I claim that if we want to find emergent properties, we should look not at complex systems, but at selection (natural selection, in particular). I argue that selection processes make the causal world ‘exuberant’ by making non-physical functional and relational properties enter the causal web of the world. (shrink)

These preprints were automatically compiled into a PDF from the collection of papers deposited in PhilSci-Archive in conjunction with the PSA 2012.

This paper compares the two known logical forms of hierarchy, both of which have been used in models of natural phenomena, including the biological. I contrast their general properties, internal formal relations, modes of growth (emergence) in applications to the natural world, criteria for applying them, the complexities that they embody, their dynamical relations in applied models, and their informational relations and semiotic aspects.

The concept of hierarchical organization is commonplace in science. Subatomic particles compose atoms, which compose molecules; cells compose tissues, which compose organs, which compose organisms; etc. Hierarchical organization is particularly prominent in ecology, a field of research explicitly arranged around levels of ecological organization. The concept of levels of organization is also central to a variety of debates in philosophy of science. Yet many difficulties plague the concept of discrete hierarchical levels. In this paper, we show how these difficulties undermine (...) various implications ascribed to hierarchical organization, and we suggest the concept of scale as a promising alternative to levels. Investigating causal processes at different scales offers a way to retain a notion of quasi-levels that avoids the difficulties inherent in the classic concept of hierarchical levels of organization. Throughout, our focus is on ecology, but the results generalize to other invocations of hierarchy in science and philosophy of science. (shrink)

The classical holism-reductionism debate, which has been of major importance to the development of ecological theory and methodology, is an epistemological patchwork. At any moment, there is a risk of it slipping into an incoherent, chaotic Tower of Babel. Yet philosophy, like the sciences, requires that words and their correlative concepts be used rigorously and univocally. The prevalent use of everyday language in the holism-reductionism issue may give a false impression regarding its underlying clarity and coherence. In reality, the conceptual (...) categories underlying the debate have yet to be accurately defined and consistently used. There is a need to map out a clear conceptual, logical and epistemological framework. To this end, we propose a minimalist epistemological foundation. The issue is easier to grasp if we keep in mind that holism generally represents the ontological background of emergentism, but does not necessarily coincide with it. We therefore speak in very loose terms of the “holism-reductionism” debate, although it would really be better characterised by the terms emergentism and reductionism. The confrontation between these antagonistic paradigms unfolds at various semantic and operational levels. In definitional terms, there is not just emergentism and reductionism, but various kinds of emergentisms and reductionisms. (shrink)

A survey and interpretation is offered of the broad range of contemporary thinking that concerns itself with the relationships between religion and science. The survey consists of a spectrum of six types of thought: (1) The modern option: translating religious wisdom into scientific concepts; (2) the postmodern/new‐age option: constructing new science‐based myths; (3) the critical post‐Enlightenment option: expressing the truth at the obscure margin of science; (4) the postmodern constructivist option: fashioning a new metaphysics for scientific knowledge; (5) the constructivist (...) traditional option: interpreting science in dynamic traditional concepts; (6) the Christian evangelical option: reaffirming the rationality of traditional belief. The interpretive effort considers these options under the rubric of the contemporary search for meaning and takes note of controversy and convergence within this search. Thinking on the religion/science interface is representative of much contemporary thinking that deals with the question of meaning in the present intellectual and cultural situation. (shrink)

Abstract Studies of irrationality in cognitive psychology have usually looked at areas where humans might be expected to be rational, yet appear not to be. In this paper the other extreme of human irrationality is examined: the delusion as it occurs in psychiatric illness. A parallel is suggested between the delusion as an aberration of cognition and some illusions which result from aberrations within optics. It is argued that, because delusions are found predominantly within certain limited areas of cognitive functioning, (...) they may represent a form of mental aberration which may tell us something about the abstract properties of mind. Possible implications of this model for several areas of cognitive science are discussed. (shrink)

A wave of recent work in metaphysics seeks to undermine the anti-reductionist, functionalist consensus of the past few decades in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. That consensus apparently legitimated a focus on what systems do, without necessarily and always requiring attention to the details of how systems are constituted. The new metaphysical challenge contends that many states and processes referred to by functionalist cognitive scientists are epiphenomenal. It further contends that the problem lies in functionalism itself, and that, to (...) save the causal significance of mind, it is necessary to re-embrace reductionism. We argue that the prescribed return to reductionism would be disastrous for the cognitive and behavioral sciences, requiring the dismantling of most existing achievements and placing intolerable restrictions on further work. However, this argument fails to answer the metaphysical challenge on its own terms. We meet that challenge by going on to argue that the new metaphysical skepticism about functionalist cognitive science depends on reifying two distinct notions of causality (one primarily scientific, the other metaphysical), then equivocating between them. When the different notions of causality are properly distinguished, it is clear that functionalism is in no serious philosophical trouble, and that we need not choose between reducing minds or finding them causally impotent. The metaphysical challenge to functionalism relies, in particular, on a naïve and inaccurate conception of the practice of physics, and the relationship between physics and metaphysics. Key Words: explanation; functionalism; mental causation; metaphysics; reductionism. (shrink)

The present work is focussed on the completeness of physics, or what is here called the Completeness Thesis: the claim that the domain of the physical is causally closed. Two major questions are tackled: How best is the Completeness Thesis to be formulated? What can be said in defence of the Completeness Thesis? My principal conclusions are that the Completeness Thesis can be coherently formulated, and that the evidence in favour if it significantly outweighs that against it. In opposition to (...) those who argue that formulation is impossible because no account of what is to count as physical can be provided, I argue that as long as the purpose of the argument in which the account is to be used are borne in mind there are no significant difficulties. The account of the physical which I develop holds as physical whatever is needed to fix the likelihood of pre-theoretically given physical effects, and hypothesises in addition that no chemical, biological or psychological factors will be needed in this way. The thus formulated Completeness Thesis is coherent, and has significant empirical content. In opposition to those who defend the doctrine of emergentism by means of philosophical arguments I contend that those arguments are flawed, setting up misleading dichotomies between needlessly attenuated alternatives and assuming the truth of what is to be proved. Against those who defend emergentism by appeal to the evidence, I argue that the history of science since the nineteenth century shows clearly that the empirical credentials of the view that the world is causally closed at the level of a small number of purely physical forces and types of energy is stronger than ever, and the credentials of emergentism correspondingly weaker. In opposition to those who argue that difficulties with reductionism point to the implausibility of the Completeness Thesis I argue that completeness in no way entails the kinds of reductionism which give rise to the difficulties in question. I argue further that the truth of the Completeness Thesis is in fact compatible with a great deal of taxonomic disorder and the impossibility of any general reduction of non-fundamental descriptions to fundamental ones. In opposition to those who argue that the epistemological credentials of fundamental physical laws are poor, and that those laws should in fact be seen as false, I contend that truth preserving accounts of fundamental laws can be developed. Developing such an account, I test it by considering cases of the composition of forces and causes, where what takes place is different to what is predicted by reference to any single law, and argue that viewing laws as tendencies allows their truth to be preserved, and sense to be made of both the experimental discovery of laws, and the fact that composition enables accurate prediction in at least some cases. (shrink)

A new approach using independence indeterminism, a novel naturalistic metaphysics for an open creative universe. -/- The problem of free will - what exactly it is, whether it is required for us to be morally responsible for our actions, and whether any natural being can possibly possess it - has remained unresolved for over 2000 years. -/- Now, starting from the very widely held belief that most change takes place in a way that is independent of how most other change (...) is taking place, this book builds an argument - and a novel metaphysical view dubbed "independence indeterminism" - that rapidly leads not only to a paradigm-changing way of viewing existence, but also to a new way of explaining our possession of free will. -/- This carefully and fully argued book will be of interest to a wide readership not only because of its focus on free will but also because independence indeterminism helps resolve other long-standing issues, including why the mind is not wholly reducible to causally determined processes occurring in the brain. (shrink)

Accounts of mechanistic explanation have emphasized the importance of looking down—decomposing a mechanism into its parts and operations. Using research on visual processing as an exemplar, I illustrate how productive such research has been. But once multiple components of a mechanism have been identified, researchers also need to figure out how it is organized—they must look around and determine how to recompose the mechanism. Although researchers often begin by trying to recompose the mechanism in terms of sequential operations, they frequently (...) find that the components of a mechanism interact in complex ways involving positive and negative feedback and that the organization often exhibits highly interactive local networks linked by a few long-range connections (small-worlds organization) and power law distributions of connections. The mechanisms are themselves active systems that are perturbed by inputs but not set in motion by them. Researchers also need to look up —situate a mechanism in its context, which may be a larger mechanism that modulates its behavior. When looking down is combined with looking around and up, mechanistic research results in an integrated, multi-level perspective. (shrink)

The thesis is defended that the theories of causation, time and space, and levels of reality are mutually interrelated in such a way that the difficulties internal to theories of causation and to theories of space and time can be understood better, and perhaps dealt with, in the categorial context furnished by the theory of the levels of reality. The structural condition for this development to be possible is that the first two theories be opportunely generalized.

In this paper, we analyze the debate between the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis in light of the concept of incommensurability developed by Thomas Kuhn. In order to do so, first we briefly present both the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Then, we clarify the meaning and interpretations of incommensurability throughout Kuhn’s works, concluding that the version of this concept deployed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the best suited to the analysis of scientific disputes. (...) After discussing incommensurability in Kuhn’s works, we address the question of whether the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis can be considered semantically, methodologically, and ontologically incommensurable, concluding that they can. Finally, we discuss three problems that arise from such a conclusion: firstly, what are the consequences of incommensurability; secondly, which mode of scientific change better explains this current dispute in evolutionary biology; and thirdly, whether rational theory comparison is possible given incommensurability. We suggest that the main consequence of incommensurability is profound disagreement, that the kind of scientific change that better explains the current dispute between the MS and the EES may be scientific specialization, and that incommensurability does not preclude rational theory comparison. (shrink)

From an embodied and enactive point of view, the mind–body problem has been reformulated as the relation between the lived or subject body on the one hand and the physiological or object body on the other (“body–body problem”). The aim of the paper is to explore the concept of circularity as a means of explaining the relation between the phenomenology of lived experience and the dynamics of organism–environment interactions. This concept of circularity also seems suitable for connecting enactive accounts with (...) ecological psychology. It will be developed in a threefold way: (1) As the circular structure of embodiment, which manifests itself (a) in the homeostatic cycles between the brain and body and (b) in the sensorimotor cycles between the brain, body, and environment. This includes the interdependence of an organism’s dispositions of sense-making and the affordances of the environment. (2) As the circular causality, which characterizes the relation between parts and whole within the living organism as well as within the organism–environment system. (3) As the circularity of process and structure in development and learning. Here, it will be argued that subjective experience constitutes a process of sense-making that implies (neuro-)physiological processes so as to form modified neuronal structures, which in turn enable altered future interactions. On this basis, embodied experience may ultimately be conceived as the integration of brain–body and body–environment interactions, which has a top-down, formative, or ordering effect on physiological processes. This will serve as an approach to a solution of the body–body problem. (shrink)

Scientific theories of consciousness identify its contents with the spatiotemporal structure of neural population activity. We follow up on this approach by stating and motivating Dynamical Emergence Theory, which defines the amount and structure of experience in terms of the intrinsic topology and geometry of a physical system’s collective dynamics. Specifically, we posit that distinct perceptual states correspond to coarse-grained macrostates reflecting an optimal partitioning of the system’s state space—a notion that aligns with several ideas and results from computational neuroscience (...) and cognitive psychology. We relate DET to existing work, offer predictions for empirical studies, and outline future research directions. (shrink)

In this paper, I review the objections against the claim that brains are computers, or, to be precise, information-processing mechanisms. By showing that practically all the popular objections are either based on uncharitable interpretation of the claim, or simply wrong, I argue that the claim is likely to be true, relevant to contemporary cognitive (neuro)science, and non-trivial.

Recent literature concerning laws of nature highlight the close relationship between general metaphysics and philosophy of science. In particular, a person's theoretical commitments in either have direct implications for her stance on laws. In this dissertation, I argue that an ontic structural realist should be a realist about laws, but only within a non-Whiteheadean process framework. Without the adoption of a process framework, any account of laws the ontic structural realist offers will require metaphysical commitments that are at odds with (...) ontic structural realism. In arguing towards this aim, I adopt an attenuated methodological naturalistic stance to show that traditional substance metaphysics, of the sort neo-Aristotelians endorse, is problematic and that we have naturalistic reasons for further developing process metaphysics. I then apply this framework to develop a processual account of mereological structures and show how we can understand structures as being stable processes. In the final section, I argue that these are the kind of structures with which the ontic structural realist concerns herself. By adopting a realist account of laws the ontic structural realist can explain how these structures enter into modal and causal relations. (shrink)

Supervenience is a relationship which has been used recently to explain the physical determination of biological phenomena despite resistance to reduction. Supervenience, however, is plagued by ambiguities which weaken its explanatory value and obscure some interesting aspects of reduction in biology. Although I suspect that similar considerations affect the use of supervenience in ethics and the philosophy of mind, I don’t intend anything I have to say here to apply outside of the physical and biological cases I consider.The main point (...) of this paper is that there is a property of biological systems which makes it both misleading and inappropriate to reduce central biological phenomena to the properties of underlying components. Despite this, reductive explanation has been a major source of innovation in biological theory. The apparent tension can be resolved if underlying properties are explanatorily relevant to the higher level phenomena even though the latter are not strictly reducible to the former. Supervenience, I will argue, is not robust enough to deny reduction while supporting explanatory relevance. (shrink)

Problem: Is constructivism contradicted by the reductionist determinism inherent in digital computation? Method: Review of examples from dynamical systems sciences, agent-based modeling and artificial intelligence. Results: Recent scientific insights seem to give reason to consider constructivism in line with what computation is adding to our knowledge of interacting dynamics and the functioning of our brains. Implications: Constructivism is not necessarily contradictory to digital computation, in particular to computer-based modeling and simulation. Constructivist content: When viewed through the lens of computation, in (...) many of its aspects constructivism seems in line with what currently is held to be valid in science. (shrink)

For several decades, economists have been preoccupied with an attempt to place their entire subject on the ‘sound microfoundations’ of general equilibrium theory, with its individualistic premises. However, this project has run into seemingly intractable problems. This essay examines underlying questions such as the appropriate building block of analysis and the structure of explanation in economics. The examination of biology is found to be instructive, due to debates concerning the limitations of reductionism within that discipline. The final part of the (...) paper argues for the autonomy of a non‐reductionist macroeconomics, based on the institution as the unit of analysis. (shrink)

Considers that in ecosystem, landscape and global ecology, an energetics reading of ecological systems is an expression of a cybernetic, systemic and holistic approach. In ecosystem ecology, the Odumian paradigm emphasizes the concept of emergence, but it has not been accompanied by the creation of a method that fully respects the complexity of the objects studied. In landscape ecology, although the emergentist, multi-level, triadic methodology of J.K. Feibleman and D.T. Campbell has gained acceptance, the importance of emergent properties is still (...) undervalued. In global ecology, the Gaia hypothesis is an expression of an organicist metaphor, while the emergentist terminology used is incongruent with the underlying physicalist cybernetics. More generally, an analytico-additional methodology and the reduction of the properties of ecosystems to the laws of physical chemistry render purely formal any assertion about the emergentist and holistic nature of the ecological systems studied. (shrink)

Emergent properties have been described by Mill, Lewes, Broad, Morgan and others, as novel, nonadditive, nonpredictable and nondeducible within a hierarchical context. I have developed a more definitive concept of a hierarchy that can be used to inspect the phenomenon of emergence in a new and detailed manner. A hierarchy is held together by descending constraints and new features can arise when an upper level entity restrains its components in new combinations that are not expected when viewing these components alone. (...) Examples of emergent features are matching anticodons and amino acids by aminoacetyl-tRNA synthetase enzymes appearing early among the first forms of life, negative feedback in end-product inhibition first occurring in microbes, memory in animals and apical cells in plants. Until recently, life was considered only in terms of physics and chemistry, but now it is known to have a third aspect of information that along with the descendant constraints in its hierarchical organization makes emergentism possible within a reductionist’s framework. (shrink)

We argue that intelligible appeals to interlevel causes (top-down and bottom-up) can be understood, without remainder, as appeals to mechanistically mediated effects. Mechanistically mediated effects are hybrids of causal and constitutive relations, where the causal relations are exclusively intralevel. The idea of causation would have to stretch to the breaking point to accommodate interlevel causes. The notion of a mechanistically mediated effect is preferable because it can do all of the required work without appealing to mysterious interlevel causes. When interlevel (...) causes can be translated into mechanistically mediated effects, the posited relationship is intelligible and should raise no special philosophical objections. When they cannot, they are suspect. (shrink)

. An attempt is made to identify a concept of ‘downward causation’ that will fit the claims of some recent writers and apply to interesting cases in biology and cognitive theory, but not to trivial cases. After noting some difficulties in achieving this task, it is proposed that in interesting cases commonly used to illustrate ‘downward causation’, (a) regularities hold between multiply realizable properties and (b) the explanation of the parallel regularity at the level of the realizing properties is non-trivial. (...) It is argued that the relation between a realizable property and the property that realizes its effect in a particular case is not usefully regarded as a species of causation and that use of the concept of downward causation deflects our attention from our central explanatory tasks. (shrink)

This book argues that a plausible account of emergence requires replacing the traditional assumption that what primarily exists are particular entities with generic processes. Traversing contemporary physics and issues of identity over time, it then proceeds to develop a metaphysical taxonomy of emergent entities and of the character of human life.

Helmuth Plessner’s Levels of Organic Life and the Human [Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, 1928] is one of the founding texts of twentieth century philosophical anthropology. It is argued that Plessner’s work demonstrates the fundamental indispensability of the qualitative humanities vis-à-vis the natural-scientific study of man. Plessner’s non-reductionist, emergentist naturalism allots complementary roles to the causal and functional investigations of the life sciences and the phenomenological and hermeneutic interpretation of the phenomenon of life in its successive levels and (...) stages. Within this context, human agency can be understood as a higher-order property of organic life, which act by the selective activation of lower-level psychophysical powers. Plessner’s three ‘anthropological laws’ are used to situate the notion of practical self-understanding in between two extremes: deterministic views that deny human freedom and responsibility and views that ascribe an unrealistic amount of autonomy to human beings. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to argue that the recognition that non-human animals are relevant to the free will problem delivers interesting new ways of thinking about the central metaphysical issues at the heart of that problem. Some such dividends, I suggest, are the following: that the problem of free will can be considered to be just a more specific version of a general question concerning how agency is to be fitted into the natural world; that action can be usefully (...) regarded as an especially interesting form of downward causation; and that the metaphysical possibility of downward causation, and hence, indirectly, also of free will, can be illuminated in valuable ways by thinking about the hierarchical structure of, and systems of functioning within, biological organisms. (shrink)

When stripped to the bare bone, there are only 11 foundational paradigms in social sciences. These foundational paradigms are like flashlights that can be utilized to shed light on different aspects of human society, but each of them can only shed light on a limited area of human society. Different schools in social science result from different but often incomplete combinations of these foundational paradigms. To adequately understand human society and its history, we need to deploy all 11 foundational paradigms, (...) although more limited combinations of them may be adequate for understanding more specific social facts. (shrink)