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Downward causation

In Francisco Jose Ayala & Theodosius Dobzhansky (eds.), Studies in the Philosophy of Biology: Reduction and Related Problems : [papers Presented at a Conference on Problems of Reduction in Biology Held in Villa Serbe, Bellagio, Italy 9-16 September 1972. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 179--186 (1974)

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  1. Levels of organization: a deflationary account.Markus I. Eronen - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (1):39-58.
    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 (...)
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  • Multilevel Causation and the Extended Synthesis.Maximiliano Martínez & Maurizio Esposito - 2014 - Biological Theory 9 (2):209-220.
    In this article we argue that the classical—linear and bottom-up directed—models of causation in biology, and the ‘‘proximate/ultimate’’ dichotomy, are inappropriate to capture the complexity inherent to biological processes. We introduce a new notion of ‘‘multilevel causation’’ where old dichotomies such as proximate/ultimate and bottom-up/ top-down are reinterpreted within a multilevel, web-like, approach. In briefly reviewing some recent work on complexity, EvoDevo, carcinogenesis, autocatalysis, comparative genomics, animal regeneration, phenotypic plasticity, and niche construction, we will argue that such reinterpretation is a (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Sarmiento, José A.“Autopoiesis.Juliana Gómez - 2011 - Ideas Y Valores 60 (146).
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  • Reductionism and the Irreducibility of Consciousness.John R. Searle - 1997 - In Ned Block, Owen Flanagan & Guven Guzeldere (eds.), The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates. MIT Press.
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  • Possible mechanisms for a multiple-level model of evolution.H. C. Plotkin & F. J. Odling - 1981 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (2):257-268.
    Many of the commentaries cohere around two major points of criticism. The first is that we have omitted discussion of the mechanisms that are assumed to operate at levels 2, 3, and 4.Campbell, Cloak, Dewsbury, Eckberg, Mundinger, Pulliam, Richerson & Boyd, Slobodkin, Simon, Williams, andWahlstenall make comments that bear on this point. The second point is that we have omitted discussion of the fact that "organisms change the environment by their activities" and thereby modify the selection pressures that act on (...)
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  • Skinner, selection, and self-control.Bo Dahlbom - 1984 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7 (4):484-486.
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  • Linear and circular causal sequences.H. C. Plotkin & F. J. Odling-Smee - 1984 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7 (4):493-494.
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  • Selection by consequences.B. F. Skinner - 1984 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7 (4):477-481.
    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 (...)
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  • Constructivism and Computation: Can Computer-Based Modeling Add to the Case for Constructivism?M. Füllsack - 2013 - Constructivist Foundations 9 (1):7-16.
    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 (...)
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  • Downward determination.Charbel Niño El-Hani - 2005 - Abstracta 1 (2):162-192.
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  • (1 other version)Psa 2012.-Preprint Volume- - unknown
    These preprints were automatically compiled into a PDF from the collection of papers deposited in PhilSci-Archive in conjunction with the PSA 2012.
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  • The Limitations of Hierarchical Organization.Angela Potochnik & Brian McGill - 2012 - Philosophy of Science 79 (1):120-140.
    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 (...)
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  • Multifaceted Ecology Between Organicism, Emergentism and Reductionism.Donato Bergandi - 2011 - In Astrid Schwarz & Kurt Jax (eds.), Ecology Revisited: Reflecting on Concepts, Advancing Science. Springer. pp. 31-43.
    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 (...)
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  • Eco-cybernetics: the ecology and cybernetics of missing emergences.Donato Bergandi - 2000 - Kybernetes 29 (7/8):928-942..
    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 (...)
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  • Complexity and philosophy.Francis Heylighen, Paul Cilliers & Carlos Gershenson - 2006 - In Francis Heylighen, Paul Cilliers & Carlos Gershenson (eds.), [Book Chapter] (in Press).
    The science of complexity is based on a new way of thinking that stands in sharp contrast to the philosophy underlying Newtonian science, which is based on reductionism, determinism, and objective knowledge. This paper reviews the historical development of this new world view, focusing on its philosophical foundations. Determinism was challenged by quantum mechanics and chaos theory. Systems theory replaced reductionism by a scientifically based holism. Cybernetics and postmodern social science showed that knowledge is intrinsically subjective. These developments are being (...)
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  • 'Fitness' and 'altruism': Traps for the unwary, bystander and biologist alike. [REVIEW]Tom Settle - 1993 - Biology and Philosophy 8 (1):61-83.
    At one level, this paper is a lament and a warning. I lament biologists borrowing well-known terms and then drastically and awkwardly changing their meanings, and I warn about the mischief this does. Biology''s public image is at stake, as is its general usefulness. At another level, I attempt to clarify the misnamed concepts, beyond what has been achieved in recent philosophical writings. This helps to account for the mischief, and to see how it might be avoidable. But the most (...)
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  • Three obstructions: Forms of causation, chronotopoids, and levels of reality.Roberto Poli - 2007 - Axiomathes 17 (1):1-18.
    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.
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  • Reduction, integration, and the unity of science: Natural, behavioral, and social sciences and the humanities.William P. Bechtel & Andrew Hamilton - 2007 - In T. Kuipers (ed.), Philosophy of Science: Focal Issues (Volume 1 of the Handbook of the Philosophy of Science). Elsevier.
    1. A Historical Look at Unity 2. Field Guide to Modern Concepts of Reduction and Unity 3. Kitcher's Revisionist Account of Unification 4. Critics of Unity 5. Integration Instead of Unity 6. Reduction via Mechanisms 7. Case Studies in Reduction and Unification across the Disciplines.
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  • The completeness of physics.David Spurrett - 1999 - Dissertation, University of Natal, Durban
    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 (...)
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  • Emergent Agent Causation.Juan Morales - 2023 - Synthese 201:138.
    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 (...)
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  • Downward Causation in Self-Organizing Systems: Problem of Self-Causation.Ganesh Bharate & A. V. Ravishankar Sarma - 2021 - Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 38 (3):301-310.
    Enabling constraints are bottom up causes which create the possibility of the existence of a system. Disabling constraints reduce the degrees of freedom and narrow the choices of the system which are structural, functional, meaningful relations that assign executive roles to the component parts. In this paper, we discuss causality as enabling and disabling constraints in order to critique the absurdity of transitivity in causal relations. If downward causation is viewed as causation by constraints, we argue that it will not (...)
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  • The Metaphysics of Emergence.Richard Campbell - 2015 - Basingstoke, England: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    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.
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  • Hierarchies, Networks, and Causality: The Applied Evolutionary Epistemological Approach.Nathalie Gontier - 2021 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 52 (2):313-334.
    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 (...)
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  • Guest-Editorial Introduction: Converging Evolutionary Patterns in Life and Culture.Nathalie Gontier - 2016 - Evolutionary Biology 4 (43):427-445.
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  • What is a hologenomic adaptation? Emergent individuality and inter-identity in multispecies systems.Javier Suárez & Vanessa Triviño - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 187 (11).
    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 (...)
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  • Explaining Free Will.Michael Elstob - 2018 - Chesham, UK: C. M. Elstob. Printed and distributed by Amazon.
    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 (...)
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  • Why think that the brain is not a computer?Marcin Miłkowski - 2016 - APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers 16 (2):22-28.
    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.
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  • What are the Units of Language Evolution?Nathalie Gontier - 2018 - Topoi 37 (2):235-253.
    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 (...)
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  • Foundational Paradigms of Social Sciences.Shiping Tang - 2011 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 41 (2):211-249.
    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, (...)
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  • The Logics of Discovery in Popper’s Evolutionary Epistemology.Mehul Shah - 2008 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 39 (2):303-319.
    Popper is well known for rejecting a logic of discovery, but he is only justified in rejecting the same type of logic of discovery that is denied by consequentialism. His own account of hypothesis generation, based on a natural selection analogy, involves an error-eliminative logic of discovery and the differences he admits between biological and conceptual evolution suggest an error-corrective logic of discovery. These types of logics of discovery are based on principles of plausibility that are used in the generation (...)
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  • Giving up the ghost.William Vaughan - 1984 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7 (4):501-501.
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  • Emergence, Closure and Inter-level Causation in Biological Systems.Matteo Mossio, Leonardo Bich & Alvaro Moreno - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (2):153-178.
    In this paper, we advocate the idea that an adequate explanation of biological systems requires appealing to organizational closure as an emergent causal regime. We first develop a theoretical justification of emergence in terms of relatedness, by arguing that configurations, because of the relatedness among their constituents, possess ontologically irreducible properties, providing them with distinctive causal powers. We then focus on those emergent causal powers exerted as constraints, and we claim that biological systems crucially differ from other natural systems in (...)
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  • Where to Look for Emergent Properties.Agustín Vicente - 2013 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 27 (2):156.
    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, (...)
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  • Hierarchical structures.Stanley N. Salthe - 2012 - Axiomathes 22 (3):355 - 383.
    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.
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  • Why the problem of reductionism in biology has implications for economics.Geoffrey M. Hodgson - 1993 - World Futures 37 (2):69-90.
    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 (...)
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  • Looking down, around, and up: Mechanistic explanation in psychology.William Bechtel - 2009 - Philosophical Psychology 22 (5):543-564.
    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 (...)
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  • Top-down causation without top-down causes.Carl F. Craver & William Bechtel - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (4):547-563.
    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 (...)
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  • What to say to a skeptical metaphysician: A defense manual for cognitive and behavioral scientists.Don Ross & David Spurrett - 2004 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (5):603-627.
    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 (...)
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  • Dynamical Emergence Theory (DET): A Computational Account of Phenomenal Consciousness.Roy Moyal, Tomer Fekete & Shimon Edelman - 2020 - Minds and Machines 30 (1):1-21.
    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 (...)
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  • Validation and Verification in Social Simulation: Patterns and Clarification of Terminology.Nuno David - 2009 - Epistemological Aspects of Computer Simulation in the Social Sciences, EPOS 2006, Revised Selected and Invited Papers, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Squazzoni, Flaminio (Ed.) 5466:117-129.
    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 (...)
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  • Physics and the Real World.George F. R. Ellis - 2006 - Foundations of Physics 36 (2):227-262.
    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 (...)
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  • The metaphysics of downward causation: Rediscovering the formal cause.Mariusz Tabaczek - 2013 - Zygon 48 (2):380-404.
    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 (...)
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  • Darwin's legacy. [REVIEW]Nathalie Gontier - 2010 - Theory in Biosciences 63.
    The year 2009 has been a year of numerous commemorations of both scientific and non-scientific achievements that contributed to the advancement of human kind. Protestants celebrated the 500th anniversary of the birth of Calvin; literary critics celebrated the 200th anniversary of the poet Edgar Allan Poe; and the musical genius Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was also born 200 years ago. 2009 further marked the bicentennial of the birth of Louis Braille, the inventor of Braille; and Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the (...)
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  • The "Triplex" of Information – The Dynamics of Transduction, Modulation, and Organization in Living Beings.Juho Rantala - manuscript
    [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.
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  • Hierarchy Theory of Evolution and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: Some Epistemic Bridges, Some Conceptual Rifts.Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda & Francisco Vergara-Silva - 2018 - Evolutionary Biology 45 (2):127-139.
    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 (...)
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  • Emergence Theories and Pragmatic Realism.Charbel Niño El-Hani & Sami Pihlström - 2002 - Essays in Philosophy 3 (2):143-176.
    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 (...)
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  • Social interaction: The missing link in evolutionary models.Ivan D. Chase - 1981 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (2):237-238.
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  • Some consequences of selection.B. F. Skinner - 1984 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7 (4):502-510.
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  • Anticipatory Functions, Digital-Analog Forms and Biosemiotics: Integrating the Tools to Model Information and Normativity in Autonomous Biological Agents.Argyris Arnellos, Luis Emilio Bruni, Charbel Niño El-Hani & John Collier - 2012 - Biosemiotics 5 (3):331-367.
    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 (...)
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  • For emergence: Refining Archer's account of social structure.Dave Elder-Vass - 2007 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 37 (1):25–44.
    The question of social structure and its relationship to human agency remains one of the central problems of social theory. One of the most promising attempts to provide a solution has been Margaret Archer's morphogenetic approach, which invokes emergence to justify treating social structure as causally effective. Archer's argument, however, has been criticised by a number of authors who suggest that the examples she cites can be explained in reductionist terms and thus that they fail to sustain her claim for (...)
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