Reductionism Emergence And Levels Of Reality

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Reductionism, Emergence and Levels of Reality

Author : Sergio Chibbaro,Lamberto Rondoni,Angelo Vulpiani
Publisher : Springer
Page : 154 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2014-05-13
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783319063614

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Reductionism, Emergence and Levels of Reality by Sergio Chibbaro,Lamberto Rondoni,Angelo Vulpiani Pdf

Scientists have always attempted to explain the world in terms of a few unifying principles. In the fifth century B.C. Democritus boldly claimed that reality is simply a collection of indivisible and eternal parts or atoms. Over the centuries his doctrine has remained a landmark, and much progress in physics is due to its distinction between subjective perception and objective reality. This book discusses theory reduction in physics, which states that the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts: the properties of things are directly determined by their constituent parts. Reductionism deals with the relation between different theories that address different levels of reality, and uses extrapolations to apply that relation in different sciences. Reality shows a complex structure of connections, and the dream of a unified interpretation of all phenomena in several simple laws continues to attract anyone with genuine philosophical and scientific interests. If the most radical reductionist point of view is correct, the relationship between disciplines is strictly inclusive: chemistry becomes physics, biology becomes chemistry, and so on. Eventually, only one science, indeed just a single theory, would survive, with all others merging in the Theory of Everything. Is the current coexistence of different sciences a mere historical venture which will end when the Theory of Everything has been established? Can there be a unified description of nature? Rather than an analysis of full reductionism, this book focuses on aspects of theory reduction in physics and stimulates reflection on related questions: is there any evidence of actual reduction? Are the examples used in the philosophy of science too simplistic? What has been endangered by the search for (the) ultimate truth? Has the dream of reductionist reason created any monsters? Is big science one such monster? What is the point of embedding science Y within science X, if predictions cannot be made on that basis?

Analysis & the Fullness of Reality

Author : Richard H. Jones
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2013-03-18
Category : Emergence (Philosophy)
ISBN : 1481988980

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Analysis & the Fullness of Reality by Richard H. Jones Pdf

Is the world nothing but matter pushing matter in a void? Are humans nothing but soulless machines for the survival of genes? Is the mind nothing but the brain? Is all science reducible to physics? Must scientists restrict the substance and structure of reality to physical forces? Does society consist merely of individuals or are holistic forces also at work? Is God really no more than a projection of nature, society, or our psyche? Or in each case do new realities emerge that cannot be reduced? Virtually every scholarly and popular book and magazine article on the mind, science, or religion touches on these issues of reductionism. But for all the interest in the topic, no in-depth introduction of the subject exists. The objective of this philosophical work is to fill that void. This book attempts to provide one common framework for studying how the issue of reduction versus emergence arises in each of the areas in which it comes up - the natural sciences, philosophy of mind, the social sciences, and religion. It tries to resolve some of the disputes by a new analysis: differentiating five types of reductionism and antireductionism - ontological, structural, theoretical, conceptual, and methodological. To help clarify the issues, a brief history of how reductionism and emergentism have developed in Western philosophy is also presented. By distinguishing different types of reductionism and by examining the issues in all the areas of philosophical interest collectively rather than limiting the discussion to just one area, the general issues surrounding reduction versus emergence become clearer. This approach brings together many of the most interesting questions today in philosophy, science, and religious studies. The attempt throughout the work is to present the reductionists' and emergentists' strongest case on each issue and to identify problems with both sides. But it is argued that in the end the reductionists in each area currently have the weaker position. The work concludes with a discussion of the centrality of nonreducible features in reality and asks whether science under a reductionist vision can ever explain the emergence of higher levels of phenomena.

Reductionism

Author : Richard H. Jones
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0838754392

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Reductionism by Richard H. Jones Pdf

Reductionism's approach brings together many of the most interesting questions today in philosophy (consciousness and computers) and in science (issues of complexity and self-organization). It also presents a brief history of how reductionism has developed in Western philosophy and religion, with reference to Indian philosophy on certain issues.

The Fabric of Reality

Author : David Deutsch
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2011-04-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780141969619

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The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch Pdf

An extraordinary and challenging synthesis of ideas uniting Quantum Theory, and the theories of Computation, Knowledge and Evolution, Deutsch's extraordinary book explores the deep connections between these strands which reveal the fabric of realityin which human actions and ideas play essential roles.

Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy

Author : Carl Gillett
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2016-09-08
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781316776643

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Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy by Carl Gillett Pdf

Grand debates over reduction and emergence are playing out across the sciences, but these debates have reached a stalemate, with both sides declaring victory on empirical grounds. In this book, Carl Gillett provides new theoretical frameworks with which to understand these debates, illuminating both the novel positions of scientific reductionists and emergentists and the recent empirical advances that drive these new views. Gillett also highlights the flaws in existing philosophical frameworks and reorients the discussion to reflect the new scientific advances and issues, including the nature of 'parts' and 'wholes', the character of aggregation, and thus the continuity of nature itself. Most importantly, Gillett shows how disputes about concrete scientific cases are empirically resolvable and hence how we can break the scientific stalemate. Including a detailed glossary of key terms, this volume will be valuable for researchers and advanced students of the philosophy of science and metaphysics, and scientific researchers working in the area.

Mind and Cosmos

Author : Thomas Nagel
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 141 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2012-11-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199919758

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Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel Pdf

The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Untying the Gordian Knot

Author : Timothy E. Eastman
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 355 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2020-12-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781793639172

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Untying the Gordian Knot by Timothy E. Eastman Pdf

In Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context, Timothy E. Eastman proposes a new creative synthesis, the Logoi framework—which is radically inclusive and incorporates both actuality and potentiality—to show how the fundamental notions of process, logic, and relations, woven with triads of input-output-context and quantum logical distinctions, can resolve a baker’s dozen of age-old philosophic problems. Further, Eastman leverages a century of advances in quantum physics and the Relational Realism interpretation pioneered by Michael Epperson and Elias Zafiris and augmented by the independent research of Ruth Kastner and Hans Primas to resolve long-standing issues in understanding quantum physics. Adding to this, Eastman makes use of advances in information and complex systems, semiotics, and process philosophy to show how multiple levels of context, combined with relations—including potential relations—both local and local-global, can provide a grounding for causation, emergence, and physical law. Finally, the Logoi framework goes beyond standard ways of knowing—that of context independence (science) and context focus (arts, humanities)—to demonstrate the inevitable role of ultimate context (meaning, spiritual dimension) as part of a transformative ecological vision, which is urgently needed in these times of human and environmental crises.

Our Common Cosmos

Author : Zoë Lehmann Imfeld,Andreas Losch
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2018-12-27
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780567680174

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Our Common Cosmos by Zoë Lehmann Imfeld,Andreas Losch Pdf

This volume collects an international body of voices, as a timely response to a rapidly advancing field of the natural sciences. The contributors explore how the disciplines of theology, earth and space sciences contribute to the debate on constantly expanding ethical challenges, and the prospect of humanity's future. The discussions offered in this volume see the 'community' as central to a sustainable and ethical approach to earth and space sciences, examining the role of theology in this communal approach, but also recognizing theology itself as part of a community of humanity disciplines. Examining the necessity for interaction between disciplines, this collection draws on voices from biodiversity studies, geology, aesthetics, literature, astrophysics, and others, to illustrate precisely why a constructive and sustainable dialogue is needed within the current scientific climate.

Distant Markets, Distant Harms

Author : Daniel K. Finn
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780199371006

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Distant Markets, Distant Harms by Daniel K. Finn Pdf

Does a consumer who bought a shirt made in another nation bear any moral responsibility when the women who sewed that shirt die in a factory fire or in the collapse of the building? Many have asserted, without explanation, that because markets cause harms to distant others, consumers bear moral responsibility for those harms. But traditional moral analysis of individual decisions is unable to sustain this argument. Distant Harms, Distant Markets presents a careful analysis of moral complicity in markets, employing resources from sociology, Christian history, feminism, legal theory, and Catholic moral theology today. Because of its individualistic methods, mainstream economics as a discipline is not equipped to understand the causality entailed in the long chains of social relationships that make up the market. Critical realist sociology, however, has addressed the character and functioning of social structures, an analysis that can helpfully be applied to the market. The True Wealth of Nations research project of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies brought together an international group of sociologists, economists, moral theologians, and others to describe these causal relationships and articulate how Catholic social thought can use these insights to more fully address issues of economic ethics in the twenty-first century. The result was this interdisciplinary volume of essays, which explores the causal and moral responsibilities that consumers bear for the harms that markets cause to distant others.

Comprehending the Complexity of Countries

Author : Hans Kuijper
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 413 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2022-01-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789811647093

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Comprehending the Complexity of Countries by Hans Kuijper Pdf

This book argues for computer-aided collaborative country research based on the science of complex and dynamic systems. It provides an in-depth discussion of systems and computer science, concluding that proper understanding of a country is only possible if a genuinely interdisciplinary and truly international approach is taken; one that is based on complexity science and supported by computer science. Country studies should be carefully designed and collaboratively carried out, and a new generation of country students should pay more attention to the fast growing potential of digitized and electronically connected libraries. In this frenzied age of globalization, foreign policy makers may – to the benefit of a better world – profit from the radically new country studies pleaded for in the book. Its author emphasizes that reductionism and holism are not antagonistic but complementary, arguing that parts are always parts of a whole and a whole has always parts.

There Is No Theory of Everything

Author : Lars Q. English
Publisher : Springer
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2017-08-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783319591506

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There Is No Theory of Everything by Lars Q. English Pdf

The main purpose of this book is to introduce a broader audience to emergence by illustrating how discoveries in the physical sciences have informed the ways we think about it. In a nutshell, emergence asserts that non-reductive behavior arises at higher levels of organization and complexity. As physicist Philip Anderson put it, “more is different.” Along the text's conversational tour through the terrain of quantum physics, phase transitions, nonlinear and statistical physics, networks and complexity, the author highlights the various philosophical nuances that arise in encounters with emergence. The final part of the book zooms out to reflect on some larger lessons that emergence affords us. One of those larger lessons is the realization that the great diversity of theories and models, and the great variety of independent explanatory frameworks, will always be with us in the sciences and beyond. There is no “Theory of Everything” just around the corner waiting to be discovered. One of the main benefits of this book is that it will make a number of exciting scientific concepts that are not normally covered at this level accessible to a broader audience. The overall presentation, including the use of examples, analogies, metaphors, and biographical interludes, is geared for the educated non-specialist.

Physicalism Deconstructed

Author : Kevin Morris
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781108472166

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Physicalism Deconstructed by Kevin Morris Pdf

Provides a philosophical and historical critique of contemporary conceptions of physicalism, especially non-reductive, levels-based approaches to physicalist metaphysics. Challenging assumptions about the mind-body problem, this accessible book will interest scholars working in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science.

Religion

Author : Christian Smith
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2019-03-26
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780691191645

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Religion by Christian Smith Pdf

A groundbreaking new theory of religion Religion remains an important influence in the world today, yet the social sciences are still not adequately equipped to understand and explain it. This book advances an innovative theory of religion that goes beyond the problematic theoretical paradigms of the past. Drawing on the philosophy of critical realism and personalist social theory, Christian Smith explores why humans are religious in the first place—uniquely so as a species—and offers an account of secularization and religious innovation and persistence that breaks the logjam in which religious scholarship has been stuck for so long. Certain to stimulate debate and inspire promising new avenues of scholarship, Religion features a wealth of illustrations and examples that help to make its concepts accessible to readers. This superbly written book brings sound theoretical thinking to a perennially thorny subject, and a new vitality and focus to its study.

To Flourish Or Destruct

Author : Christian Smith
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2021-02-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780226759920

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To Flourish Or Destruct by Christian Smith Pdf

In his 2010 book What Is a Person?, Christian Smith argued that sociology had for too long neglected this fundamental question. Prevailing social theories, he wrote, do not adequately “capture our deep subjective experience as persons, crucial dimensions of the richness of our own lived lives, what thinkers in previous ages might have called our ‘souls’ or ‘hearts.’” Building on Smith’s previous work, To Flourish or Destruct examines the motivations intrinsic to this subjective experience: Why do people do what they do? How can we explain the activity that gives rise to all human social life and social structures? Smith argues that our actions stem from a motivation to realize what he calls natural human goods: ends that are, by nature, constitutionally good for all human beings. He goes on to explore the ways we can and do fail to realize these ends—a failure that can result in varying gradations of evil. Rooted in critical realism and informed by work in philosophy, psychology, and other fields, Smith’s ambitious book situates the idea of personhood at the center of our attempts to understand how we might shape good human lives and societies.

Philosophy of Science

Author : Veronica Wexford,Chloe Garcia,Oswald Penrith,Bookademy EN,Honur Blakares
Publisher : Bookademy
Page : 51 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2024-06-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Philosophy of Science by Veronica Wexford,Chloe Garcia,Oswald Penrith,Bookademy EN,Honur Blakares Pdf

Dive into the intriguing world of the Philosophy of Science with this comprehensive exploration of its definition and scope. This enlightening book delves into the fundamental questions surrounding scientific inquiry, from the nature of scientific knowledge to the ethical considerations inherent in scientific practice. Readers will uncover the complexities of naturalism, reductionism, and the sociology of scientific knowledge, gaining insights into the social, ethical, and philosophical dimensions of science. Engaging and thought-provoking, this book offers a rich tapestry of ideas and perspectives, inviting readers to ponder the intricate intersections of science, philosophy, and society.