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)

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)

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)

The variation and selection form of explanationcan be prescinded from the evolutionary biologyhome ground in which it was discovered and forwhich it has been most developed. When this isdone, variation and selection explanations arefound to have potential application to a widerange of phenomena, far beyond the classicalbiological ground and the contemporaryextensions into epistemological domains. Itappears as the form of explanation most suitedto phenomena of fit. It is also found toparticipate in multiple interestingrelationships with other forms of explanation. We proceed with (...) an examination of multiplekinds of phenomena, interrelationships withother members of the family of forms ofexplanation, and some novel applications evenwithin the home ground of evolutionary biology. (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)

We argue that living systems process information such that functionality emerges in them on a continuous basis. We then provide a framework that can explain and model the normativity of biological functionality. In addition we offer an explanation of the anticipatory nature of functionality within our overall approach. We adopt a Peircean approach to Biosemiotics, and a dynamical approach to Digital-Analog relations and to the interplay between different levels of functionality in autonomous systems, taking an integrative approach. We then apply (...) the underlying biosemiotic logic to a particular biological system, giving a model of the B-Cell Receptor signaling system, in order to demonstrate how biosemiotic concepts can be used to build an account of biological information and functionality. Next we show how this framework can be used to explain and model more complex aspects of biological normativity, for example, how cross-talk between different signaling pathways can be avoided. Overall, we describe an integrated theoretical framework for the emergence of normative functions and, consequently, for the way information is transduced across several interconnected organizational levels in an autonomous system, and we demonstrate how this can be applied in real biological phenomena. Our aim is to open the way towards realistic tools for the modeling of information and normativity in autonomous biological agents. (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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

Hierarchical organization is an essential characteristic of living things. Although most biologists affirm the concept of living things as hierarchically organized structures, there are widespread differences of interpretation in the meaning of hierarchy and of how the concept of hierarchy applies to living things. One such basic difference involves the distinction between the concept of control hierarchy and classification hierarchy. It is suggested that control hierarchies are distinguished from classification hierarchies in that while the former involve authority relationships between levels, (...) the latter do not. This is illustrated in an analysis of proposed hierarchies of replicators and interactors.The analysis of levels of hierarchies and their relationships also brings up the part-whole problem. An authority relationship between levels implies that the whole has a determining influence on the parts that make up the whole, and that parts have no independent, meaningful existence apart from the whole. The concept of an authority relationship in a part-whole relationship introduces the question of the independence or sovereignty of the components of the subordinate levels in a hierarchically organized living thing. This problem is discussed along with an analysis of the rather novel theory of enkapsis proposed by H. Dooyeweerd, in which he distinguishes part-whole relationships from enkaptic relationships. (shrink)

Aside from his remarkable studies in psychology and the social sciences, Donald Thomas Campbell (1916–1996) made significant contributions to philosophy, particularly philosophy of science,epistemology, and ethics. His name and his work are inseparably linked with the evolutionary approach to explaining human knowledge (evolutionary epistemology). He was an indefatigable supporter of the naturalistic turn in philosophy and has strongly influenced the discussion of moral issues (evolutionary ethics). The aim of this paper is to briefly characterize Campbells work and to discuss its (...) philosophical implications. In particular, I show its relevance to some current debates in the intersection of biology and philosophy. In fact, philosophy of biology would look poorer without Campbells influence. The present paper is not a hagiography but an attempt to evaluate and critically discuss the meaning of Campbells work for philosophy of biology and to encourage scholars working in this field to read and re-read this work which is both challenging and inspiring. (shrink)

The early research of Karl Popper both in psychology and in philosophy of science is described; its basis for his later breakthroughs in the philosophy of science is explained. His debt to Otto Selz’s thought psychology is thereby detailed. Otto Selz’s philosophy of science is then explained, and its conflict with Popper’s early as well as his later views is portrayed. These studies of the conflicting views of Popper’s early views and Selz’s philosophy of science provide the basis for demonstrating (...) the mistakes that Michel ter Hark has made in claiming that the alleged originality of Popper’s views occurred only in the 1970s and are little more than a rehash of Selz’s alleged evolutionary epistemology. (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)

For Kant, the main aim of teleology in nature is to identify or to segregate as a particular class of objects certain types of causal systems, specifically, systems of interdependent parts.With the development of physiology as a distinct science at the beginning of the 18th century, the idea of interdependence or reciprocity of parts in a system was well-established as a fundamental principle for the specification of organisms. Kant combined the ideas of teleology and causal reciprocity in his systems-theoretical foundation (...) of organized beings in nature. In the analysis of such systems teleological thinking, i.e. the focus on end states or outcomes, is prevalent because the outcome of each process is relevant for the perpetuation of the system as a whole. Teleological thinking thus plays a methodological role in Kant’s philosophy of nature. Its status ismerely reflective, in that it neither postulates a separate ontological category for living beings nor does it constrain mechanical explanations. But at the same time, teleology is constitutive for a particular class of objects and their scientific study. In Kants Philosophie der Naturwissenschaften kommt der Teleologie eine wesentliche Rolle in der Identifikation und Ausgliederung einer bestimmten Klasse von kausalen Systemen zu: den Systemen aus wechselseitig voneinander abhängigen Teilen. Die Vorstellung der wechselseitigen Abhängigkeit zwischen den Teilen eines Ganzen entwickelt sich mit der Etablierung der Physiologie als einer besonderen Wissenschaft zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts zu einem grundlegenden Prinzip, das der Spezifizierung von Organismen dient. Kant verbindet diese Vorstellung der Wechselseitigkeit mit der Teleologie in seiner systemtheoretischen Fundierung des Begriffs eines organisierten Wesens der Natur. In der Analyse dieser Systeme spielt die Teleologie im Sinne der Konzipierung eines Prozesses ausgehend von seinem Resultat eine wichtige Rolle, weil die Wirkung eines physiologischen Vorgangs für die Erhaltung des ganzen organischen Systems entscheidend ist. Da das System in seiner Einheit und Ganzheit erst in der teleologischen Beurteilung erkannt wird, kommt dem teleologischen Denken in Kants Philosophie der Naturwissenschaften eine methodologische Funktion zu. Die teleologische Beurteilung hat allerdings einen bloß reflektierenden Status, insofern über sie keine neue ontologische Kategorie für Lebewesen begründet wird und die Reichweite mechanistischer Erklärungen durch sie nicht beschränkt wird. Trotzdem ist die Teleologie konstitutiv für die Erkenntnis einer bestimmten Klasse von Gegenständen und deren wissenschaftliche Untersuchung. (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)

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)

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)