Peirce’s system may be identified as one of a family of “organic memory” theories which flourished during the period in which he developed it, especially in the Monist journals which published much of his late work. “Organic memory” theories were vigorously opposed in their own day and are remembered in our own, if at all, only in connection with discredited theories such as racial memory and Lamarckian inheritance. When read in the context of their own time, however, “organic memory” theories (...) stand revealed as among modernity’s first attempts at a still-unrealized, post-nominalist re-foundation of science. Being thus closely related to Peirce’s own project both in time and in spirit, they deserve to be understood on their own terms. The synthesis of these theories in the book Das Gesetz der Serie (1919) by the Austrian biologist Paul Kammerer (1880-1926), a prominent representative of organized Monism's European branch, provides insight into the systematic unity of the various aspects of Peirce's thought, especially the close relationship between pragmatism and what is now called “emergence.”. (shrink)

The mind–body problem is analyzed in a physicalist perspective. By combining the concepts of emergence and algorithmic information theory in a thought experiment, employing a basic nonlinear process, it is shown that epistemologically emergent properties may develop in a physical system. Turning to the significantly more complex neural network of the brain it is subsequently argued that consciousness is epistemologically emergent. Thus reductionist understanding of consciousness appears not possible; the mind–body problem does not have a reductionist solution. The ontologically emergent (...) character of consciousness is then identified from a combinatorial analysis relating to universal limits set by quantum mechanics, implying that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to low-level phenomena. (shrink)

With growing complexity in society, designers are entering the fields of organizational studies and social change with high levels of responsibility and, sometimes, little background knowledge of theories and recent evolution. Specifically in the fields of strategy, change, and transformation, the turn toward complexity science is gaining acceptance in both academia and practice. This article presents Imagineering as a complexity-inspired design approach to effectuate transformational objectives. It illustrates the method with an application on the city of Antwerp. The author concludes (...) by reflecting on the implications and perspectives of the method for transformational design and for design thinking in management. (shrink)

Emergence, the coming-into-being of new entities, new organizations, or new structures out of the interactions of individual agents in networks, is becoming a central concept in today's management literature. We are now evolving from the age of reductionism to the age of emergence, meaning that organizations in the connected society can no longer predict what is going to happen but will find themselves continuously doing things in co-evolution with their environment, things that are not necessarily in line with actions planned (...) in advance. In such a dynamic environment managers must learn to enable emergent processes in real time if an organization is to turn unpredictability to its competitive advantage. The importance of the perspective of emergence is introduced in regard to the growing complexity in society. (shrink)

There are many different notions of information in logic, epistemology, psychology, biology and cognitive science, which are employed differently in each discipline, often with little overlap. Since our interest here is in biological processes and organisms, we develop a taxonomy of functional information that extends the standard cue/signal distinction. Three general, main claims are advanced here. This new taxonomy can be useful in describing learning and communication. It avoids some problems that the natural/non-natural information distinction faces. Functional information is​ ​produced (...) through exploration and stabilisation processes. (shrink)

The course of biological evolution is regarded by many authors as an ascending path toward higher levels of variety, complexity and integration. There are similar but partly conflicting accounts of the nature and causes of this ascending course. With the aim of reaching a unified conception I start by summarily reviewing three notable examples. These are, in their latest presentations, those of Hoffmeyer and Stjernfelt 2015, Szathmáry 2015, and Lane 2015a. Comparison of their commonalities and divergences, combined with further reflections, (...) leads to the following views: 1) cooperation between preexistent traits and processes is the primary determinant in the emergence of evolutionary novelty; 2) cooperation is a triadic relation similar to semiosis ; 3) regulation, the key element of both metabolism and replication, results from the cooperation of energetic and semiotic causation; 4) conceptual generalization and concrete generalization are fruits of cooperation. Conceptual generalizations spring from the cooperation of ideas. I believe these realizations supply essential elements for a unified view of the ascent of biological evolution towards higher levels of organization. Some of these conceptions are also applicable to similar ascending trajectories through the stages of cultural and technological evolution. (shrink)

The mind-body problem is analyzed in a physicalist perspective. By combining the concepts of emergence and algorithmic information theory in a thought experiment employing a basic nonlinear process, it is shown that epistemically strongly emergent properties may develop in a physical system. Turning to the significantly more complex neural network of the brain it is subsequently argued that consciousness is epistemically emergent. Thus reductionist understanding of consciousness appears not possible; the mind-body problem does not have a reductionist solution. The ontologically (...) emergent character of consciousness is then identified from a combinatorial analysis relating to universal limits set by quantum mechanics, implying that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to low-level phenomena. (shrink)