The operator hierarchy, a chain of closures linking matter, life
... science has pervaded every aspect of our existence while the number of scientific disciplines and the knowledge they represent have exploded (Zwart 2010). The rapidly growing amount of information has made communication between disciplines increasingly difficult. Consequently, there is an urgent nee ...
... science has pervaded every aspect of our existence while the number of scientific disciplines and the knowledge they represent have exploded (Zwart 2010). The rapidly growing amount of information has made communication between disciplines increasingly difficult. Consequently, there is an urgent nee ...
From Darwinian Metaphysics towards Understanding the Evolution
... attention, not just by me but by the scholarly world in general, and hence geneDarwinism had become a major pest to our intellectual ecology. Although in this last decade the “selfish gene” idea has increasingly had to share the spotlight with other tendencies in biology and even in behavioural econ ...
... attention, not just by me but by the scholarly world in general, and hence geneDarwinism had become a major pest to our intellectual ecology. Although in this last decade the “selfish gene” idea has increasingly had to share the spotlight with other tendencies in biology and even in behavioural econ ...
Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) and the new philosophy of biology
... in Berlin. Stresemann noticed Ernst’s talent for natural history and succeeded in recruiting him to zoology by promising that he could go on an expedition once his doctoral thesis was completed. This convinced Ernst who knew that as a physician he wouldn’t have the opportunity “to be sent to foreign ...
... in Berlin. Stresemann noticed Ernst’s talent for natural history and succeeded in recruiting him to zoology by promising that he could go on an expedition once his doctoral thesis was completed. This convinced Ernst who knew that as a physician he wouldn’t have the opportunity “to be sent to foreign ...
Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction
... of each discipline’s distinctive approaches to its own and other disciplines’ domains. A physicist’s argument that biology should be more like physics, or a chemist’s claim that biological facts need to be explained by chemistry, cannot be settled by experiment and observation, if they can be settle ...
... of each discipline’s distinctive approaches to its own and other disciplines’ domains. A physicist’s argument that biology should be more like physics, or a chemist’s claim that biological facts need to be explained by chemistry, cannot be settled by experiment and observation, if they can be settle ...
penultimate draft - U
... which represents reality as having multiple ontological structures, needs instead multiple quantifiers which cannot each be understood as ranging over the same pegboard in different ways but must instead be understood as ranging over different pegboards. A language with multiple singular existential ...
... which represents reality as having multiple ontological structures, needs instead multiple quantifiers which cannot each be understood as ranging over the same pegboard in different ways but must instead be understood as ranging over different pegboards. A language with multiple singular existential ...
Getting Priority Straight
... idea, these explanations thereby confer ontological sparsity. The priority theorist holds that, since the existence and features of raindrops can be explained solely by reference to the existence and features of other things, the world is no more ontologically lush for containing raindrops than it i ...
... idea, these explanations thereby confer ontological sparsity. The priority theorist holds that, since the existence and features of raindrops can be explained solely by reference to the existence and features of other things, the world is no more ontologically lush for containing raindrops than it i ...
Philosophy of Science Matters - The Shifting Balance of Factors
... “sketch,” a rough outline of an explanation that is to be filled in with further details about the science. For instance, there may be laws of nature at molecular levels concerning the genetics, spatial distribution, neurobiology and endocrinology, functional morphology, behavior, and the like, whic ...
... “sketch,” a rough outline of an explanation that is to be filled in with further details about the science. For instance, there may be laws of nature at molecular levels concerning the genetics, spatial distribution, neurobiology and endocrinology, functional morphology, behavior, and the like, whic ...
Darwinian metaphysics
... cooperation. Moreover, Darwinism at least probabilistically seems to have been correlated with materialism and atheism. Yet one should also note that from the very formulation of Darwinism there have been attempts to interpret natural selection in the opposite direction, linking natural selection to ...
... cooperation. Moreover, Darwinism at least probabilistically seems to have been correlated with materialism and atheism. Yet one should also note that from the very formulation of Darwinism there have been attempts to interpret natural selection in the opposite direction, linking natural selection to ...
Ernst Mayr`s Philosophy of Science: Its Connections With
... difficulty of the task, he insists, one needs only to think about the inherent complexity involved in the differentiation process during the ontogeny of living organisms, assuming that such an objective is desirable to biologists in the first place. (2) Criticism of an assumed universality of determ ...
... difficulty of the task, he insists, one needs only to think about the inherent complexity involved in the differentiation process during the ontogeny of living organisms, assuming that such an objective is desirable to biologists in the first place. (2) Criticism of an assumed universality of determ ...
How is Biological Explanation Possible?
... are disguised statements about evolutionary etiologies of particular properties of biological systems on this planet. This is where we came in, so to speak. For if the apparent generalizations of functional biology are not real ones, do not support counterfactuals in the way laws do,5 are often pred ...
... are disguised statements about evolutionary etiologies of particular properties of biological systems on this planet. This is where we came in, so to speak. For if the apparent generalizations of functional biology are not real ones, do not support counterfactuals in the way laws do,5 are often pred ...
Strong and Weak Emergence
... when there is something it feels like from the system’s own perspective. It is a key fact about nature that it contains conscious systems; I am one such. And there is reason to believe that the facts about consciousness are not deducible from any number of physical facts. I have argued this positio ...
... when there is something it feels like from the system’s own perspective. It is a key fact about nature that it contains conscious systems; I am one such. And there is reason to believe that the facts about consciousness are not deducible from any number of physical facts. I have argued this positio ...
Emergence in Sociology
... However, emergence has also been invoked by methodological individualists in sociology and economics. Methodological individualists accept the existence of emergent social properties, yet they claim that such properties can be reduced to explanations in terms of individuals and their relationships. ...
... However, emergence has also been invoked by methodological individualists in sociology and economics. Methodological individualists accept the existence of emergent social properties, yet they claim that such properties can be reduced to explanations in terms of individuals and their relationships. ...
The Poverty of Deductivism: A Constructive Realist Model of
... specified kind E will occur at a place and time which is related in a specified manner to the place and time of the occurence of the first event (p. 232; chaps. 9, 11). Indeed, Hempel suggests that good explanations in the social and historical sciences always refer to general laws, at least tacitly ...
... specified kind E will occur at a place and time which is related in a specified manner to the place and time of the occurence of the first event (p. 232; chaps. 9, 11). Indeed, Hempel suggests that good explanations in the social and historical sciences always refer to general laws, at least tacitly ...
AP & Regents Biology - Whitman
... Why study Big Ideas in Biology? Biology is an ever expanding body of knowledge… too much to memorize it all need to generalize create a framework upon which to organize new knowledge themes are fundamental in understanding the nature of living organisms ...
... Why study Big Ideas in Biology? Biology is an ever expanding body of knowledge… too much to memorize it all need to generalize create a framework upon which to organize new knowledge themes are fundamental in understanding the nature of living organisms ...
Does Biology Have Laws? The Experimental Evidence
... criteriathat are more continuous than dichotomous. Basically,the relevant scientificcommunity decides how to describesuch a study on the basis of two things: how important is the hypothesis to be tested, and how important is the test of that hypothesis. This idea explains why such a study conducted ...
... criteriathat are more continuous than dichotomous. Basically,the relevant scientificcommunity decides how to describesuch a study on the basis of two things: how important is the hypothesis to be tested, and how important is the test of that hypothesis. This idea explains why such a study conducted ...
transdisciplinarity
... consensus of a collectivity, or some inter-subjective agreement. It also has a trans-subjective dimension: for example, experimental data can ruin the most beautiful scientific theory. Of course, one has to distinguish the words “Real” and “Reality”. Real designates that which is, while Reality is c ...
... consensus of a collectivity, or some inter-subjective agreement. It also has a trans-subjective dimension: for example, experimental data can ruin the most beautiful scientific theory. Of course, one has to distinguish the words “Real” and “Reality”. Real designates that which is, while Reality is c ...
session_proposal_Space_Evo_Exp_Ishpssb2013 general
... (Pearl 2000, Woodward 2005, Machamer, Darden and Craver 2000); and 2) of the increasing exploration of various fields of evolutionary biology. Even though the main dichotomies have not been challenged, philosophical issues now rely on a finer-grained understanding of the explanatory structure of bio ...
... (Pearl 2000, Woodward 2005, Machamer, Darden and Craver 2000); and 2) of the increasing exploration of various fields of evolutionary biology. Even though the main dichotomies have not been challenged, philosophical issues now rely on a finer-grained understanding of the explanatory structure of bio ...
Demystifying Emergence - CSIRO Marine Research (Perth)
... In this short presentation, we summarize key outcomes of our 3-year Interaction Task on Emergence. For the most part, we confined our discussions to three issues: • Relationship(s) between emergence, evolution, self-organisation and complexity; • Relationship(s) between emergence and formal logic, c ...
... In this short presentation, we summarize key outcomes of our 3-year Interaction Task on Emergence. For the most part, we confined our discussions to three issues: • Relationship(s) between emergence, evolution, self-organisation and complexity; • Relationship(s) between emergence and formal logic, c ...
Persons in time - The Open University
... If this argument works, it excludes both the eirenic and the inclusive responses by showing that not all facts are equally “deep”, and that the facts that are deepest are the ones that the reductionist appeals to. However, the argument does not work. One obvious problem with it is the almost unanswe ...
... If this argument works, it excludes both the eirenic and the inclusive responses by showing that not all facts are equally “deep”, and that the facts that are deepest are the ones that the reductionist appeals to. However, the argument does not work. One obvious problem with it is the almost unanswe ...
Process and ontological priorities in evolution
... This means that, at the very most, 10110 simple events could have occurred over all physical time. It thereby follows that if any event has considerably less than 10-110 probability of re-occurring, it will never do so in any physically realistic time. Now, 10110 is a genuinely enormous number. It m ...
... This means that, at the very most, 10110 simple events could have occurred over all physical time. It thereby follows that if any event has considerably less than 10-110 probability of re-occurring, it will never do so in any physically realistic time. Now, 10110 is a genuinely enormous number. It m ...
Critical thinking frameworks and triangulation File
... Different disciplines are in part defined by the concepts they use to describe, explain, and raise questions about the phenomena they study. Even though geologists and physicists are both interested in earthquakes, they think about earthquakes in different ways. Likewise, even though sociologists an ...
... Different disciplines are in part defined by the concepts they use to describe, explain, and raise questions about the phenomena they study. Even though geologists and physicists are both interested in earthquakes, they think about earthquakes in different ways. Likewise, even though sociologists an ...
The triune organism – an abstract
... The proposition that the diversity of nature displays certain archetypical patterns is usually named a typological idea. Typology is conventionally regarded to be a kind of static idealism of platonic origin; a way of thinking that was challenged and largely overturned by the ascension of evolutioni ...
... The proposition that the diversity of nature displays certain archetypical patterns is usually named a typological idea. Typology is conventionally regarded to be a kind of static idealism of platonic origin; a way of thinking that was challenged and largely overturned by the ascension of evolutioni ...
Long Live Postdisciplinary Studies! Sociology
... 'feminine', 'high culture', or whatever, as if this determined their content. To use an example given by Bourdieu, those who dismiss feminism as 'middle class' are guilty of sociological reductionism. We quite rightly regard it as insulting to treat feminists as merely responding to their class posi ...
... 'feminine', 'high culture', or whatever, as if this determined their content. To use an example given by Bourdieu, those who dismiss feminism as 'middle class' are guilty of sociological reductionism. We quite rightly regard it as insulting to treat feminists as merely responding to their class posi ...
Emergence in Psychology - UNC
... Holists have always faced the difficult task of ontologically grounding their antireductionism. If the holist accepts the ontological position of materialism -only physical matter exists -then on what grounds can an anti-reductionist argument be made? After all, the higher-Ievel phenomenon is nothin ...
... Holists have always faced the difficult task of ontologically grounding their antireductionism. If the holist accepts the ontological position of materialism -only physical matter exists -then on what grounds can an anti-reductionist argument be made? After all, the higher-Ievel phenomenon is nothin ...
Reductionism
Reductionism refers to several related but different philosophical positions regarding the connections between phenomena, or theories, ""reducing"" one to another, usually considered ""simpler"" or more ""basic"". The Oxford Companion to Philosophy suggests that it is ""one of the most used and abused terms in the philosophical lexicon"" and suggests a three part division:Ontological reductionism: a belief that the whole of reality consists of a minimal number of partsMethodological reductionism: the scientific attempt to provide explanation in terms of ever smaller entities Theory reductionism: the suggestion that a newer theory does not replace or absorb the old, but reduces it to more basic terms. Theory reduction itself is divisible into three: translation, derivation and explanation.Reductionism can be applied to objects, phenomena, explanations, theories, and meanings.In the sciences, application of methodological reductionism attempts explanation of entire systems in terms of their individual, constituent parts and their interactions. Thomas Nagel speaks of psychophysical reductionism (the attempted reduction of psychological phenomena to physics and chemistry), as do others and physico-chemical reductionism (the attempted reduction of biology to physics and chemistry), again as do others. In a very simplified and sometimes contested form, such reductionism is said to imply that a system is nothing but the sum of its parts. However, a more nuanced view is that a system is composed entirely of its parts, but the system will have features that none of the parts have. ""The point of mechanistic explanations is usually showing how the higher level features arise from the parts.""Other definitions are used by other authors. For example, what Polkinghorne calls conceptual or epistemological reductionism is the definition provided by Blackburn and by Kim: that form of reductionism concerning a program of replacing the facts or entities entering statements claimed to be true in one area of discourse with other facts or entities from another area, thereby providing a relationship between them. Such a connection is provided where the same idea can be expressed by ""levels"" of explanation, with higher levels reducible if need be to lower levels. This use of levels of understanding in part expresses our human limitations in grasping a lot of detail. However, ""most philosophers would insist that our role in conceptualizing reality [our need for an hierarchy of ""levels"" of understanding] does not change the fact that different levels of organization in reality do have different properties.""As this introduction suggests, there are a variety of forms of reductionism, discussed in more detail in subsections below.Reductionism strongly reflects a certain perspective on causality. In a reductionist framework, the phenomena that can be explained completely in terms of relations between other more fundamental phenomena, are called epiphenomena. Often there is an implication that the epiphenomenon exerts no causal agency on the fundamental phenomena that explain it. The epiphenomena are sometimes said to be ""nothing but"" the outcome of the workings of the fundamental phenomena, although the epiphenomena might be more clearly and efficiently described in very different terms. There is a tendency to avoid taking an epiphenomenon as being important in its own right. This attitude may extend to cases where the fundamentals are not clearly able to explain the epiphenomena, but are expected to by the speaker. In this way, for example, morality can be deemed to be ""nothing but"" evolutionary adaptation, and consciousness can be considered ""nothing but"" the outcome of neurobiological processes.Reductionism does not preclude the existence of what might be called emergent phenomena, but it does imply the ability to understand those phenomena completely in terms of the processes from which they are composed. This reductionist understanding is very different from emergentism, which intends that what emerges in ""emergence"" is more than the sum of the processes from which it emerges.