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Explanations at multiple levels

Alexander Rueger

Minds and Machines 11 (4):503-520 (2001)

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Causal Relations and Explanatory Strategies in Physics.Andrew Wayne - 2015 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 29 (1):75-89.details Many philosophers now regard causal approaches to explanation as highly promising, even in physics. This is due in large part to James Woodward's influential argument that a wide variety of scientific explanations are causal, based on his interventionist approach to causation. This article argues that some derivations describing causal relations and satisfying Woodward's criteria for causal explanation fail to be explanatory. Further, causal relations are unnecessary for a range of explanations, widespread in physics, involving highly idealized models. These constitute significant (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 3 citations
Emergence and singular limits.Andrew Wayne - 2012 - Synthese 184 (3):341-356.details Recent work by Robert Batterman and Alexander Rueger has brought attention to cases in physics in which governing laws at the base level “break down” and singular limit relations obtain between base- and upper-level theories. As a result, they claim, these are cases with emergent upper-level properties. This paper contends that this inference—from singular limits to explanatory failure, novelty or irreducibility, and then to emergence—is mistaken. The van der Pol nonlinear oscillator is used to show that there can be a (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 17 citations
Computational Models of Emergent Properties.John Symons - 2008 - Minds and Machines 18 (4):475-491.details Computational modeling plays an increasingly important explanatory role in cases where we investigate systems or problems that exceed our native epistemic capacities. One clear case where technological enhancement is indispensable involves the study of complex systems.1 However, even in contexts where the number of parameters and interactions that define a problem is small, simple systems sometimes exhibit non-linear features which computational models can illustrate and track. In recent decades, computational models have been proposed as a way to assist us in (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 9 citations
Reduction, Autonomy, and Causal Exclusion among Physical Properties.Alexander Rueger - 2004 - Synthese 139 (1):1 - 21.details Is there a problem of causal exclusion between micro- and macro-level physical properties? I argue (following Kim) that the sorts of properties that in fact are in competition are macro properties, viz., the property of a (macro-) system of 'having such-and-such macro properties' (call this a 'macro-structural property') and the property of the same system of 'being constituted by such-and-such a micro- structure' (call this a 'micro-structural property'). I show that there are cases where, for lack of reducibility, there is (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 8 citations
Reduction and emergence in the physical sciences: Reply to Rueger.Max Kistler - 2006 - Synthese 151 (3):347 - 354.details I analyse Rueger’s application of Kim’s model of functional reduction to the relation between the thermal conductivities of metal bars at macroscopic and atomic scales. 1) I show that it is a misunderstanding to accuse the functional reduction model of not accounting for the fact that there are causal powers at the micro-level which have no equivalent at the macro-level. The model not only allows but requires that the causal powers by virtue of which a functional predicate is defined, are (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 3 citations
Emergence and adaptation.Philippe Huneman - 2008 - Minds and Machines 18 (4):493-520.details I investigate the relationship between adaptation, as defined in evolutionary theory through natural selection, and the concept of emergence. I argue that there is an essential correlation between the former, and “emergence” defined in the field of algorithmic simulations. I first show that the computational concept of emergence (in terms of incompressible simulation) can be correlated with a causal criterion of emergence (in terms of the specificity of the explanation of global patterns). On this ground, I argue that emergence in (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 9 citations
Psa 2012.-Preprint Volume- - unknowndetails These preprints were automatically compiled into a PDF from the collection of papers deposited in PhilSci-Archive in conjunction with the PSA 2012. Download Export citation Bookmark
Appearing Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Quantum Gravity.Karen Crowther - 2014 - Dissertation, University of Sydneydetails Quantum gravity is understood as a theory that, in some sense, unifies general relativity (GR) and quantum theory, and is supposed to replace GR at extremely small distances (high-energies). It may be that quantum gravity represents the breakdown of spacetime geometry described by GR. The relationship between quantum gravity and spacetime has been deemed ``emergence'', and the aim of this thesis is to investigate and explicate this relation. After finding traditional philosophical accounts of emergence to be inappropriate, I develop a (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 4 citations

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