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  1. TBR.Carolyn Dicey Jennings - manuscript
  2. The rise of the technobionts: toward a new ontology to understand current planetary crisis.Gustavo Magallanes Guijón & O. López-Corona - forthcoming - Researchers.One.
    Inhere we expand the concept of Holobiont to incorporate niche construction theory in order to increase our understanding of the current planetary crisis. By this, we propose a new ontology, the Ecobiont, as the basic evolutionary unit of analysis. We make the case of Homo Sapiens organized around modern cities (technobionts) as a different Ecobiont from classical Homo Sapiens (i.e. Hunter- gatherers Homo Sapiens). We consider that Ecobiont ontology helps to make visible the coupling of Homo Sapiens with other biological (...)
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  3. Life is strongly emergent.Michele Paolini Paoletti - forthcoming - Ratio.
  4. On the notion of diachronic emergence.Jessica Wilson - forthcoming - In Amanda Bryant & David Yates (eds.), Rethinking Emergence. Oxford University Press.
    (Note: the posted version of this paper is undergoing non-trivial revision; an updated version will be posted in June 2024.) Is there a need for a distinctively diachronic conception of metaphysical emergence? Here I argue to the contrary. In the main, my strategy consists in considering a representative sample of accounts of purportedly diachronic metaphysical emergence, and arguing that in each case, the purportedly diachronic emergence at issue either can (and should) be subsumed under a broadly synchronic account of metaphysical (...)
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  5. Looping Nature. Recursivity, Epigenesis and Ideology.Florian Endres - 2024 - Technophany 3 (1).
    The following paper attempts to articulate a distinctly materialist notion of emergence and the formation of patterns by way of re-visiting two texts that have been considered oddities, if not embarrassments, by the subsequent developments of their respective disciplines: Freud’s Project for a Scientific Psychology and Engels’s Dialectic of Nature. Both texts are strikingly similar in their speculative engagement with the natural sciences and in their potential to inform a renewed engagement with the question of the relation between technology and (...)
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  6. Baleen whales are among the biggest creatures on Earth – science is revealing new secrets about their size.S. McKee - 2024 - The Conversation.
    People often think of all whales as giants of the sea when in fact they vary in size dramatically, from the 30-metre blue whale to the two-metre dwarf sperm whale. However, almost all of the largest family by size, the baleen whales, are massive – and scientists have only recently understood how they grew so big. Adding to this understanding, a new study may help explain a longstanding puzzle in science about how baleen whales can have such a high cell (...)
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  7. Did Schrödinger solve the mystery of life?S. McKee - 2024 - The Institute for Art and Ideas.
    From Aristotle to Darwin and Schrödinger to Marie Curie, understanding life has been a scientific and philosophical goal since humans were first able to conceptualise their subjectivity. Sam McKee argues that there is no point in searching for life in other worlds when we do not know what it is on our own planet. Many a debate today centres around a dispute over the definition of life, whether that be abortion politics, assisted suicide or evolutionary biology. McKee argues that we (...)
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  8. Biological Individuals.Robert A. Wilson & Matthew J. Barker - 2024 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has (...)
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  9. Themes of Consolidation in Eugene P. Odum’s Publicization of the Levels Concept in Ecology Textbooks, 1953–1975.Daniel S. Brooks - 2023 - Perspectives on Science 31 (4):437-464.
    Following its initial development in the 1920’s and 1930’s, by mid-century the concept of “levels of organization” began to disperse throughout the life science textbook literature. Among other early textbooks that first applied the levels concept, Eugene P. Odum’s usage of the notion in his textbook series Fundamentals of Ecology (and his later series Ecology) stands out due to the marked emphasis placed on the concept as a foundational, erotetically-oriented organizing principle. In this paper, I examine Odum’s efforts toward advocating (...)
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  10. Human major transitions from the perspective of distributed adaptations.Ehud Lamm, Meir Finkel & Oren Kolodny - 2023 - Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 378 (1872):11.
    Distributed adaptations are cases in which adaptation is dependent on the population as a whole: the adaptation is conferred by a structural or compositional aspect of the population; the adaptively relevant information cannot be reduced to information possessed by a single individual. Possible examples of human-distributed adaptations are song lines, traditions, trail systems, game drive lanes and systems of water collection and irrigation. Here we discuss the possible role of distributed adaptations in human cultural macro-evolution. Several kinds of human-distributed adaptations (...)
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  11. Does Organicism Really Need Organization?Olivier Sartenaer - 2023 - In Matteo Mossio (ed.), Organization in Biology. Springer. pp. 103-125.
    The main purpose of the present chapter is to argue in favor of the claim that, contrary to what is usually and tacitly assumed, organization is not necessary for organicism. To this purpose, I first set up the stage by providing a working characterization of organicism that involves two free parameters, whose variations allow for covering the rich and diverse conceptual landscape of organicism, past and present. In particular, I contend that organization is usually construed as a “mean to an (...)
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  12. Vitalism.André Ariew & Gesiel Da Silva - 2022 - In James M. Mattingly (ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. SAGE Publications. pp. 940-944.
  13. On the naturalisation of teleology: self-organisation, autopoiesis and teleodynamics.Miguel Garcia-Valdecasas - 2022 - Adaptive Behavior 30 (2):103-117.
    In recent decades, several theories have claimed to explain the teleological causality of organisms as a function of self-organising and self-producing processes. The most widely cited theories of this sort are variations of autopoiesis, originally introduced by Maturana and Varela. More recent modifications of autopoietic theory have focused on system organisation, closure of constraints and autonomy to account for organism teleology. This article argues that the treatment of teleology in autopoiesis and other organisation theories is inconclusive for three reasons: First, (...)
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  14. Distributed Adaptations: Can a Species Be Adapted While No Single Individual Carries the Adaptation?Ehud Lamm & Oren Kolodny - 2022 - Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 10.
    Species’ adaptation to their environments occurs via a range of mechanisms of adaptation. These include genetic adaptations as well as non-traditional inheritance mechanisms such as learned behaviors, niche construction, epigenetics, horizontal gene transfer, and alteration of the composition of a host’s associated microbiome. We propose to supplement these with another modality of eco-evolutionary dynamics: cases in which adaptation to the environment occurs via what may be called a “distributed adaptation,” in which the adaptation is not conferred via something carried by (...)
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  15. Philosophy of Developmental Biology.Marcel Weber - 2022 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    The history of developmental biology is interwoven with debates as to whether mechanistic explanations of development are possible or whether alternative explanatory principles or even vital forces need to be assumed. In particular, the demonstrated ability of embryonic cells to tune their developmental fate precisely to their relative position and the overall size of the embryo was once thought to be inexplicable in mechanistic terms. Taking a causal perspective, this Element examines to what extent and how developmental biology, having turned (...)
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  16. Autonomous Systems and the Place of Biology Among Sciences. Perspectives for an Epistemology of Complex Systems.Leonardo Bich - 2021 - In Gianfranco Minati (ed.), Multiplicity and Interdisciplinarity. Essays in Honor of Eliano Pessa. Springer. pp. 41-57.
    This paper discusses the epistemic status of biology from the standpoint of the systemic approach to living systems based on the notion of biological autonomy. This approach aims to provide an understanding of the distinctive character of biological systems and this paper analyses its theoretical and epistemological dimensions. The paper argues that, considered from this perspective, biological systems are examples of emergent phenomena, that the biological domain exhibits special features with respect to other domains, and that biology as a discipline (...)
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  17. Facts, Conventions, and the Levels of Selection.Pierrick Bourrat - 2021 - Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
    Debates concerning the units and levels of selection have persisted for over fifty years. One major question in this literature is whether units and levels of selection are genuine, in the sense that they are objective features of the world, or merely reflect the interests and goals of an observer. Scientists and philosophers have proposed a range of answers to this question. This Element introduces this literature and proposes a novel contribution. It defends a realist stance and offers a way (...)
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  18. Genetics on the neurodiversity spectrum: Genetic, phenotypic and endophenotypic continua in autism and ADHD.Polaris Koi - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 89 (October 2021):52–62.
    How we ought to diagnose, categorise and respond to spectrum disabilities such as autism and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a topic of lively debate. The heterogeneity associated with ADHD and autism is described as falling on various continua of behavioural, neural, and genetic difference. These continua are varyingly described either as extending into the general population, or as being continua within a given disorder demarcation. Moreover, the interrelationships of these continua are likewise often vague and subject to diverse interpretations. (...)
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  19. The Beginning of Life Issues: An Islamic Perspective.Piyali Mitra - 2021 - Journal of Religion and Health 60 (2):663-683.
    Islam gives legal precedence to purity of lineage and known parenthood of all children. In Islam treatment to infertility using IVF is permitted within validity of marriage contract with no genes mixing. The paper shows that the Qur’ān, the word of Allah, and science, the deeds of Allah are not in major conflicts in defining the start of human life. The Holy Qur’ān provides an elegant description of origin, developmental stages of intra-uterine life. The Hadith explains two positions one that (...)
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  20. Metafisica dell'emergenza.Erica Onnis - 2021 - Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier.
    Negli ultimi anni, il richiamo al concetto di emergenza si è fatto sempre più diffuso in molte aree della filosofia e della scienza. Il termine viene usato per riferirsi alla circostanza in cui un sistema (fisico, chimico, biologico, ma anche sociale) manifesta delle proprietà e dei comportamenti che sembrano nuovi rispetto a quelli delle sue parti più semplici. Questo libro si propone di chiarire questo fenomeno, tenendo conto, da un lato, che le discipline coinvolte nel dibattito sono molte, quindi un (...)
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  21. Strengthening Weak Emergence.Nora Berenstain - 2020 - Erkenntnis 87 (5):2457-2474.
    Bedau's influential (1997) account analyzes weak emergence in terms of the non-derivability of a system’s macrostates from its microstates except by simulation. I offer an improved version of Bedau’s account of weak emergence in light of insights from information theory. Non-derivability alone does not guarantee that a system’s macrostates are weakly emergent. Rather, it is non-derivability plus the algorithmic compressibility of the system’s macrostates that makes them weakly emergent. I argue that the resulting information-theoretic picture provides a metaphysical account of (...)
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  22. Engels’s Emergentist Dialectics.Kaan Kangal - 2020 - Monthly Review 6 (72):18-27.
  23. Friedrich Engels: Emergenz und Dialektik.Kaan Kangal - 2020 - Widerspruch 70:43-56.
  24. The Unfolding of a New Vision of Life, Cosmos and Evolution.Agustin Ostachuk - 2020 - Ludus Vitalis 28 (53):81-83.
    Has science already answered the fundamental questions about the concepts of Life, Cosmos and Evolution? Has science not relegated these fundamental questions by following up on more immediate, “useful” and practical endeavors that ultimately ensure that the wheel of capitalism keeps spinning in its frantic search for material and economic progress? There is something terribly wrong with the current theory of evolution, understood as the Darwinian theory with its successive versions and extensions. The concept of natural selection, the cornerstone of (...)
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  25. Integrated-structure emergence and its mechanistic explanation.Gil Santos - 2020 - Synthese 198 (9):8687-8711.
    This paper proposes an integrated-structure notion of interlevel emergence, from a dynamic relational ontological perspective. First, I will argue that only the individualist essentialism of atomistic metaphysics can block the possibility of interlevel emergence. Then I will show that we can make sense of emergence by recognizing the formation of structures of transformative and interdependent causal relations in the generation and development of a particular class of mereological complexes called integrated systems. Finally, I shall argue that even though the emergent (...)
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  26. How to count biological minds: symbiosis, the free energy principle, and reciprocal multiscale integration.Matthew Sims - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2157-2179.
    The notion of a physiological individuals has been developed and applied in the philosophy of biology to understand symbiosis, an understanding of which is key to theorising about the major transition in evolution from multi-organismality to multi-cellularity. The paper begins by asking what such symbiotic individuals can help to reveal about a possible transition in the evolution of cognition. Such a transition marks the movement from cooperating individual biological cognizers to a functionally integrated cognizing unit. Somewhere along the way, did (...)
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  27. Experiences in the Biocontinuum: A New Foundation for Living Systems.Richard L. Summers - 2020 - Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
    The central question in the biological sciences for the past 100 years has concerned an understanding of how living systems differ from other general physical phenomena and what makes these systems unique. With new developments in the fields of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, systems theory, chaos, and information theory over the past few decades, there has been growing interest in finally answering the question first posed by Erwin Schrödinger in the 1940s concerning the true scientific nature of living systems. Similarly, there is (...)
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  28. Mapping the continuum of research strategies.Matthew Baxendale - 2019 - Synthese 196 (11):4711-4733.
    Contemporary philosophy of science has seen a growing trend towards a focus on scientific practice over the epistemic outputs that such practices produce. This practice-oriented approach has yielded a clearer understanding of how reductive research strategies play a central role in contemporary scientific inquiry. In parallel, a growing body of work has sought to explore the role of non-reductive, or systems-level, research strategies. As a result, the relationship between reductive and non-reductive scientific practices is becoming of increased importance. In this (...)
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  29. The Quest for a Holistic and Historical-Developmental Theory of the Organism.Agustin Ostachuk - 2019 - Ludus Vitalis 27 (51):23-42.
    In this work the doctrine of organicism will be addressed, as explained and seen mainly by Bertalanffy. We will study how this doctrine represents and embodies the ambiguity of Kantian teleology as a regulative principle, and how this same problem leads to consider a real problem as a knowledge problem. It will be concluded that organicism, conceived in this way, does not represent a true holism, but what we will call a syn-holism, a synthesis or assembly, and that to obtain (...)
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  30. The Trajectory of Evolution and its Implications for Humanity.John E. Stewart - 2019 - Journal of Big History (3):141-155.
    Does the Big History of life on Earth disclose a trajectory that has been driven by selection? If so, will the trajectory continue to apply into the future? This paper argues that such a trajectory exists, and examines some of its key implications. The most important consequence is that humanity can use the trajectory to guide how it evolves and adapts into the future. This is because the trajectory identifies a sequence of adaptations that will be favoured by selection. If (...)
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  31. A metaphysical approach to holobiont individuality: Holobionts as emergent individuals.Javier Suárez & Vanessa Triviño - 2019 - Quaderns de Filosofia 6 (1):59-76.
    Holobionts are symbiotic assemblages composed by a host plus its microbiome. The status of holobionts as individuals has recently been a subject of continuous controversy, which has given rise to two main positions: on the one hand, holobiont advocates argue that holobionts are biological individuals; on the other, holobiont detractors argue that they are just mere chimeras or ecological communities, but not individuals. Both parties in the dispute develop their arguments from the framework of the philosophy of biology, in terms (...)
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  32. Conceptual Challenges in the Theoretical Foundations of Systems Biology.Marta Bertolaso & Emanuele Ratti - 2018 - In Mariano Bizzarri (ed.), Systems Biology. Springer, Humana Press. pp. 1-13.
    In the last decade, Systems Biology has emerged as a conceptual and explanatory alternative to reductionist-based approaches in molecular biology. However, the foundations of this new discipline need to be fleshed out more carefully. In this paper, we claim that a relational ontology is a necessary tool to ground both the conceptual and explanatory aspects of Systems Biology. A relational ontology holds that relations are prior—both conceptually and explanatory—to entities, and that in the biological realm entities are defined primarily by (...)
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  33. La réalité du champ axiologique : cybernétique et pensée de l'information chez Raymond Ruyer [The reality of the axiological field: Cybernetics and the thinking of information in Raymond Ruyer].Philippe Gagnon - 2018 - Louvain-la-Neuve: Chromatika.
    Description courte (Électre, 2019) : Une étude d'un des principaux axes de réflexion du philosophe des sciences et de la nature Raymond Ruyer (1902-1987). À la lumière des découvertes de l'embryogenèse et en s'appuyant par ailleurs sur la théorie de l'information, il proposa une interprétation des concepts unificateurs de la cybernétique mécaniste. -/- Short Descriptor (Electre 2019): A study of one of the main axes of reflection of the French philosopher of science and of nature Raymond Ruyer (1902-1987). Relying on (...)
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  34. Disentangling the Vitalism–Emergentism Knot.Olivier Sartenaer - 2018 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 49 (1):73-88.
    Starting with the observation that there exist contradictory claims in the literature about the relationship between vitalism and emergentism—be it one of inclusion or, on the contrary, exclusion–, this paper aims at disentangling the vitalism–emergentism knot. To this purpose, after having described a particular form of emergentism, namely Lloyd Morgan’s emergent evolutionism, I develop a conceptual analysis on the basis of a distinction between varieties of monism and pluralism. This analysis allows me to identify and characterize several forms of vitalism (...)
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  35. Brute Facts.Elly Vintiadis & Constantinos Mekios (eds.) - 2018 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    Brute facts are facts that don't have explanations. They are instrumental in our attempts to give accounts of other facts or phenomena, and so they play a key role in many philosophers' views about the structure of the world. This volume explores neglected questions about the nature of brute facts and their explanatory role.
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  36. Being Emergence vs. Pattern Emergence: Complexity, Control, and Goal-Directedness in Biological Systems.Jason Winning & William Bechtel - 2018 - In Sophie Gibb, Robin Findlay Hendry & Tom Lancaster (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Emergence. New York: Routledge. pp. 134-144.
    Emergence is much discussed by both philosophers and scientists. But, as noted by Mitchell (2012), there is a significant gulf; philosophers and scientists talk past each other. We contend that this is because philosophers and scientists typically mean different things by emergence, leading us to distinguish being emergence and pattern emergence. While related to distinctions offered by others between, for example, strong/weak emergence or epistemic/ontological emergence (Clayton, 2004, pp. 9–11), we argue that the being vs. pattern distinction better captures what (...)
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  37. Must strong emergence collapse?Umut Baysan & Jessica Wilson - 2017 - Philosophica 91 (1):49--104.
    Some claim that the notion of strong emergence as involving ontological or causal novelty makes no sense, on grounds that any purportedly strongly emergent features or associated powers 'collapse', one way or another, into the lower-level base features upon which they depend. Here we argue that there are several independently motivated and defensible means of preventing the collapse of strongly emergent features or powers into their lower-level bases, as directed against a conception of strongly emergent features as having fundamentally novel (...)
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  38. (1 other version)Language and Ontological Emergence.J. T. M. Miller - 2017 - Philosophica 91 (1):105-143.
    Providing empirically supportable instances of ontological emergence is notoriously difficult. Typically, the literature has focused on two possible sources. The first is the mind and consciousness; the second is within physics, and more specifically certain quantum effects. In this paper, I wish to suggest that the literature has overlooked a further possible instance of emergence, taken from the special science of linguistics. In particular, I will focus on the property of truth-evaluability, taken to be a property of sentences as created (...)
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  39. Review of A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber (1996).Michael Starks - 2017 - Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization Michael Starks 3rd Ed. (2017).
    The Einstein of the New Age holds forth in his unique and brilliant style on the history of world views and how to put spirit back in our life. If you have the patience to learn his jargon and read slowly there is alot of serious brainfood here. I read this and his Sex, Ecology and Spirituality(1995) with Hofstadter´s famous Godel, Escher, Bach(GEB) written in 1980(both of which I have reviewed here). Wilber´s work has many parallels with GEB, both of (...)
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  40. (2 other versions)Review of Religion Explained The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer (2002).Michael Starks - 2017 - Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization -- Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 3rd Ed 686p(2017).
    You can get a quick summary of this book on p 135 or 326. If you are not up to speed on evolutionary psychology you should first read one of the numerous recent texts with this term in the title. One of the best is " The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology " by Buss, but it is big and expensive. Until about 15 years ago, ´explanations´´of behavior have not really been explanations of mental processes at all, but rather vague and (...)
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  41. Ontology, Complexity, and Compositionality.Michael Strevens - 2017 - In Matthew H. Slater & Zanja Yudell (eds.), Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science: New Essays. New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.
    Sciences of complex systems thrive on compositional theories – toolkits that allow the construction of models of a wide range of systems, each consisting of various parts put together in different ways. To be tractable, a compositional theory must make shrewd choices about the parts and properties that constitute its basic ontology. One such choice is to decompose a system into spatiotemporally discrete parts. Compositional theories in the high-level sciences follow this rule of thumb to a certain extent, but they (...)
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  42. A Clear and Understood Case of Strong Emergence.J. H. Van Hateren - 2017 - Biosemiotics 10 (1):5-7.
    This Letter to the Editor is a comment on a paper by Rodríguez Higuera (Biosemiotics 9, 155–167, 2016) that refers to a paper by van Hateren (Biosemiotics 8, 403–419, 2015). The comment argues that semiosis (i.e., the making of meaning) has biological roots in an internal process X occurring within all forms of life. This internal process produces, in effect, an approximation (i.e., an estimate) of the fitness of an organism. X subsequently drives a purely stochastic process of structural change (...)
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  43. The ontology of organisms: Mechanistic modules or patterned processes?Christopher J. Austin - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (5):639-662.
    Though the realm of biology has long been under the philosophical rule of the mechanistic magisterium, recent years have seen a surprisingly steady rise in the usurping prowess of process ontology. According to its proponents, theoretical advances in the contemporary science of evo-devo have afforded that ontology a particularly powerful claim to the throne: in that increasingly empirically confirmed discipline, emergently autonomous, higher-order entities are the reigning explanantia. If we are to accept the election of evo-devo as our best conceptualisation (...)
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  44. A Vital Challenge to Materialism.Jesse M. Mulder - 2016 - Philosophy 91 (2):153-182.
    Life poses a threat to materialism. To understand the phenomena of animate nature, we make use of a teleological form of explanation that is peculiar to biology, of explanations in terms of what I call the ‘vital categories’ – and this holds even for accounts of underlying physico-chemical ‘mechanisms’. The materialist claims that this teleological form of explanation does not capture what is metaphysically fundamental, whereas her preferred physical form of explanation does. In this essay, I do three things. (1) (...)
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  45. Emergence, Emergentism and Pragmatism.Guy Bennett-Hunter - 2015 - Theology and Science 13 (3).
    In this paper, I argue for the usefulness of pragmatism as a framework within which to develop the theological application of emergentist theory. I consider some philosophical issues relevant to the recent revival of interest, across various disciplines, in the concept of emergence and clarify some of the conceptual issues at stake in the attempts to formulate the philosophical position of emergentism and to apply it theologically. After highlighting some major problems arising from the main existing ways of formulating emergentism, (...)
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  46. О Научной Статье "Персистентные И Симбиотические Теории Абиогенеза И Ранней Эволюции Протобионтов / Прокариот: Мультиагентный Компартментализационно-Фазовый Симбиогенез И "Персистентная Панспермия". [REVIEW]Olle Gradoff - 2015 - Bull. Of Orenburg Research Center of Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (3):3.
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  47. “Das Andere der Natur” - Eine Abhandlung über das gleichnamige Buch von JC Schmidt im Hirzel-Verlag. [REVIEW]Paul Gottlob Layer - 2015 - Universitas, Heidelberg 70 (830):62-73.
    Nicht Stabilität, sondern Instabilität sei der Grundcharakter der Natur, so hören wir von Jan Schmidt als Auftakt zu seinem Buch „Das Andere der Natur“ (Hirzel-Verlag, 2015). „Das Eine der Natur“, welches reduktionistisch zu erfassen ist, soll durch ein „Anderes“ ergänzt werden. Von dieser anderen Seite her zeigt sich „Natur ... auch (als) instabil, komplex, chaotisch, zufällig, emergent...“, und aus dieser Sicht des Naturgeschehens heraus will der Autor eine Philosophie der Instabilität entwerfen. Der gelernte Physiker und Philosoph lehrt an der Hochschule (...)
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  48. Aggregation Paradoxes and Non-Commutativity.Dominique Raynaud - 2015 - In Gianluca Manzo (ed.), Theories and Social Mechanisms. Oxford: The Bardwell Press. pp. 353-371.
    In this chapter, I discuss the "common mind thesis" that social integrates have mind of their own – a thesis which is built on a kind of aggregation paradox named doctrinal paradox. External analysis objects its very name: there is no paradox, but non-commutativity of the function composition involved in the aggregation process (Part I). Internal analysis shows that the doctrinal paradox works only when premises are separable. However premises turn out to be hardly separable in the examples cited in (...)
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  49. Programming the Emergence in Morphogenetically Architected Complex Systems.Franck Varenne, Pierre Chaigneau, Jean Petitot & René Doursat - 2015 - Acta Biotheoretica 63 (3):295-308.
    Large sets of elements interacting locally and producing specific architectures reliably form a category that transcends the usual dividing line between biological and engineered systems. We propose to call them morphogenetically architected complex systems (MACS). While taking the emergence of properties seriously, the notion of MACS enables at the same time the design (or “meta-design”) of operational means that allow controlling and even, paradoxically, programming this emergence. To demonstrate our claim, we first show that among all the self-organized systems studied (...)
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  50. Reducing the Emergence of the Gaps: Computation for Weak Emergence.Ty Branch - 2014 - Dissertation,
    This thesis contributes to the growing literature surrounding the importance of weak emergence by showing it can account for more phenomena than originally conceived via the use of computational reduction. Weak emergence refers to unpredictable higher-level phenomena that are reducible to lower-level phenomena. The ability of weak emergence to reduce higher-level phenomena to their lower-level constituents is useful for establishing a mechanistic explanation of emergent features. The tension between holistic higher-level phenomena and lower-level parts is a classic argument in philosophy (...)
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