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  1. A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology.John A. Dupre & Daniel J. Nicholson - 2018 - In Daniel J. Nicholson & John Dupré (eds.), Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    This chapter argues that scientific and philosophical progress in our understanding of the living world requires that we abandon a metaphysics of things in favour of one centred on processes. We identify three main empirical motivations for adopting a process ontology in biology: metabolic turnover, life cycles, and ecological interdependence. We show how taking a processual stance in the philosophy of biology enables us to ground existing critiques of essentialism, reductionism, and mechanicism, all of which have traditionally been associated with (...)
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  • Rethinking Democracy: A Systems Perspective on the Global Unrest.Gennady Shkliarevsky - 2016 - Systems Research and Behavioral Science 33 (3):452-470.
    The paper seeks to make a contribution towards a better understanding of the current global political unrest. It argues that this unrest reflects ongoing tensions between hierarchical and non-hierarchical interactions. It also argues that the opposition between hierarchical and non-hierarchical interactions is not ontological but rather is rooted in the way we approach reality and is, therefore, subject to our control. The tendency to exclude the process of construction from our frame of vision is characteristic for the view of reality (...)
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  • Towards the naturalization of agency based on an interactivist account of autonomy.Argyris Arnellos, Thomas Spyrtou & Ioannis Darzentas - 2010 - New Ideas in Psychology 28 (3):296-311.
    This paper attempts to provide the basis for a broader naturalized account of agency. Naturalization is considered as the need for an ongoing and open-ended process of scientific inquiry driven by the continuous formulation of questions regarding a phenomenon. The naturalization of agency is focused around the interrelation of the fundamental notions of autonomy, functionality, intentionality and meaning. Certain naturalized frameworks of agency are critically considered in an attempt to bring together all the characteristic properties that constitute an autonomous agent, (...)
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  • Recent work in the philosophy of biology.Kim Sterelny - 1991 - Philosophical Books 32 (1):1-17.
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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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  • The Process Dynamics of Normative Function.Wayne David Christensen & Mark H. Bickhard - 2002 - The Monist 85 (1):3-28.
    Outlines the etiological theory of normative functionality. Analysis of the autonomous system; Function of systems-oriented approaches; Specifications of system identity.
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  • A process-based model for an interactive ontology.Richard Campbell - 2009 - Synthese 166 (3):453 - 477.
    The paper proposes a process-based model for an ontology that encompasses the emergence of process systems generated by increasingly complex levels of organization. Starting with a division of processes into those that are persistent and those that are fleeting, the model builds through a series of exclusive and exhaustive disjunctions. The crucial distinction is between those persistent and cohesive systems that are energy wells, and those that are far-from-equilibrium. The latter are necessarily open; they can persist only by interaction with (...)
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  • Beyond theoretical reduction and layer-cake antireduction: How DNA retooled genetics and transformed biological practice.C. Kenneth Waters - unknown
    Watson and Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA led to developments that transformed many biological sciences. But what were the relevant developments and how did they transform biology? Much of the philosophical discussion concerning this question can be organized around two opposing views: theoretical reductionism and layer-cake antireductionism. Theoretical reductionist and their anti-reductionist foes hold two assumptions in common. First, both hold that biological knowledge is structured like a layer cake, with some biological sciences, such as molecular biology cast (...)
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  • The evolutionary structure of scientific theories.John S. Wilkins - 1998 - Biology and Philosophy 13 (4):479–504.
    David Hull's (1988c) model of science as a selection process suffers from a two-fold inability: (a) to ascertain when a lineage of theories has been established; i.e., when theories are descendants of older theories or are novelties, and what counts as a distinct lineage; and (b) to specify what the scientific analogue is of genotype and phenotype. This paper seeks to clarify these issues and to propose an abstract model of theories analogous to particulate genetic structure, in order to reconstruct (...)
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  • Entropy and information in evolving biological systems.Daniel R. Brooks, John Collier, Brian A. Maurer, Jonathan D. H. Smith & E. O. Wiley - 1989 - Biology and Philosophy 4 (4):407-432.
    Integrating concepts of maintenance and of origins is essential to explaining biological diversity. The unified theory of evolution attempts to find a common theme linking production rules inherent in biological systems, explaining the origin of biological order as a manifestation of the flow of energy and the flow of information on various spatial and temporal scales, with the recognition that natural selection is an evolutionarily relevant process. Biological systems persist in space and time by transfor ming energy from one state (...)
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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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  • Physicalism, Emergence and Downward Causation.Richard J. Campbell & Mark H. Bickhard - 2011 - Axiomathes 21 (1):33-56.
    The development of a defensible and fecund notion of emergence has been dogged by a number of threshold issues neatly highlighted in a recent paper by Jaegwon Kim. We argue that physicalist assumptions confuse and vitiate the whole project. In particular, his contention that emergence entails supervenience is contradicted by his own argument that the ‘microstructure’ of an object belongs to the whole object, not to its constituents. And his argument against the possibility of downward causation is question-begging and makes (...)
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  • Autonomy in anticipatory systems: Significance for functionality, intentionality and meaning.John Collier - unknown
    Abstract Many anticipatory systems cannot in themselves act meaningfully or represent intentionally. This stems largely from the derivative nature of their functionality. All current artificial control systems, and many living systems such as organs and cellular parts of organisms derive any intentionality they might have from their designers or possessors. Derivative functionality requires reference to some external autonomously functional system, and derivative intentionality similarly requires reference to an external autonomous intentional system. The importance of autonomy can be summed up in (...)
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  • The Complex 'I'. The Formation of Identity in Complex Systems.Paul Cilliers & Tanya De Villiers-Botha - 2010 - In F. P. Cilliers & R. Preiser (eds.), Complexity, Difference and Identity. Issues in Business Ethics. Springer. pp. 19–38.
    When we deal with complex things, like human subjects or organizations, we deal with identity – that which makes a person or an organization what it is and distinguishes him/her/it from other persons or organizations, a kind of “self”. Our identity determines how we think about and interact with others. It will be argued in this chapter that the self is constituted relationally. Moreover, when we are in the realm of the self, we are always already in the realm of (...)
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  • Genidentity and Biological Processes.Thomas Pradeu - 2018 - In Daniel J. Nicholson & John Dupré (eds.), Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    A crucial question for a process view of life is how to identify a process and how to follow it through time. The genidentity view can contribute decisively to this project. It says that the identity through time of an entity X is given by a well-identified series of continuous states of affairs. Genidentity helps address the problem of diachronic identity in the living world. This chapter describes the centrality of the concept of genidentity for David Hull and proposes an (...)
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  • Reflecting on complexity of biological systems: Kant and beyond?Gertrudis Van de Vijver, Linda Van Speybroeck & Windy Vandevyvere - 2003 - Acta Biotheoretica 51 (2):101-140.
    Living organisms are currently most often seen as complex dynamical systems that develop and evolve in relation to complex environments. Reflections on the meaning of the complex dynamical nature of living systems show an overwhelming multiplicity in approaches, descriptions, definitions and methodologies. Instead of sustaining an epistemic pluralism, which often functions as a philosophical armistice in which tolerance and so-called neutrality discharge proponents of the burden to clarify the sources and conditions of agreement and disagreement, this paper aims at analysing: (...)
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  • Asymptotics, reduction and emergence.C. A. Hooker - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (3):435-479.
    All the major inter-theoretic relations of fundamental science are asymptotic ones, e.g. quantum theory as Planck's constant h 0, yielding (roughly) Newtonian mechanics. Thus asymptotics ultimately grounds claims about inter-theoretic explanation, reduction and emergence. This paper examines four recent, central claims by Batterman concerning asymptotics and reduction. While these claims are criticised, the discussion is used to develop an enriched, dynamically-based account of reduction and emergence, to show its capacity to illuminate the complex variety of inter-theory relationships in physics, and (...)
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  • Reductionism or holism? The two faces of biology.Joseph A. Walker & Thomas E. Cloete - 2023 - HTS Theological Studies 79 (3):7.
    Reductionism and holism, that is, antireductionism, are two of the prevailing paradigms within the philosophy of biology. Reductionists strive to understand biological phenomena by reducing them to a series of levels of complexity with each lower level forming the foundation for the subsequent level, by mapping such biological phenomena inasmuch as possible to the principal phenomena within the fundamental sciences of chemistry and physics. In this way, complex phenomena can be reduced to assemblages of more elementary explananda. Holism, in counterpart, (...)
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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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  • Biological and Physicochemical Explanations in Experimental Biology.William A. Rottschaefer - 2008 - Biological Theory 3 (4):380-390.
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  • Reduction and instrumentalism in genetics.Philip Gasper - 1992 - Philosophy of Science 59 (4):655-670.
    In his important paper "1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences" (1984), Philip Kitcher defends biological antireductionism, arguing that the division of biology into subfields such as classical and molecular genetics is "not simply... a temporary feature of our science stemming from our cognitive imperfections but [is] the reflection of levels of organization in nature" (p. 371). In a recent discussion of Kitcher's views, Alexander Rosenberg has argued, first, that Kitcher has shown that the reduction of classical to (...)
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  • Bénard Cells: A Model Dissipative System.John Collier & S. M. Banerjee - unknown
    differential from bottom to top, depth of fluid, and the coefficients of expansion, viscosity and thermal Bénard convection, is one of the more intensely conductivity of the fluid. Even though it is a simple studied dissipative systems, both theoretically and..
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  • Two Faces of Maxwell's Demon Reveal the Nature of Irreversibility.John D. Collier - 1990 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 21 (2):257.
    demon thought experiment remains ambiguous even today. One of the most delightful thought It seems that Maxwell originally invoked experiments in the history of physical science is..
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  • Interaction and bio-cognitive order.C. A. Hooker - 2009 - Synthese 166 (3):513-546.
    The role of interaction in learning is essential and profound: it must provide the means to solve open problems (those only vaguely specified in advance), but cannot be captured using our familiar formal cognitive tools. This presents an impasse to those confined to present formalisms; but interaction is fundamentally dynamical, not formal, and with its importance thus underlined it invites the development of a distinctively interactivist account of life and mind. This account is provided, from its roots in the interactivist (...)
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  • Intrinsic information.John D. Collier - 1990 - In Philip P. Hanson (ed.), Information, Language and Cognition. University of British Columbia Press. pp. 1--390.
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  • Molecular genetics.Ken Waters - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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