This paper argues against the view that the standard explanation of phase transitions in statistical mechanics may be considered a causal explanation, a distortion that can nevertheless successfully represent causal relations.

Current Perspectives in Philosophy of Biology.

Cancer is typically spoken of as a “complex” disease. But, in what sense are cancers “complex”? Is there one sense, or several? What implications does this complexity have – both for how we study, and how we intervene upon cancers? The aim of this paper is first, to clarify the variety of senses in which cancer is spoken of as "complex" in the scientific literature, and second, to discover what explanatory and predictive roles such features play.

Frigg and Reiss (2009) argue that philosophical problems in simulation bear enough resemblance to recognized issues in the philosophy of modeling that they only pose challenges analogous to those found in standard analytic models used to represent natural systems. They suggest that there are no new philosophical problems in computer simulation modeling beyond those found in traditional mathematical modeling. Winsberg (2009) has countered that there appear to be genuinely new epistemological problems in simulation modeling because the knowledge obtained from them (...) is ‘downward, motley, and autonomous.’ Here I draw out some specific ways that these epistemological problems are manifest in complex ecological simulation, especially in agent-based models. These models contain novel features that were impossible to anticipate prior to the computer revolution, and continue to present difficulties and challenges of both a practical and philosophical nature (Humphreys 2002). (shrink)

The common opinion has been that evolution results in the continuing development of more complex forms of life, generally understood as more complex organisms. The arguments supporting that opinion have recently come under scrutiny and been found wanting. Nevertheless, the appearance of increasing complexity remains. So, is there some sense in which evolution does grow complexity? Artificial life simulations have consistently failed to reproduce even the appearance of increasing complexity, which poses a challenge. Simulations, as much as scientific theories, are (...) obligated at least to save the appearances! We suggest a relation between these two problems, understanding biological complexity growth and the failure to model even its appearances. We present a different understanding of that complexity which evolution grows, one that genuinely runs counter to entropy and has thus far eluded proper analysis in information-theoretic terms. This complexity is reflected best in the increase in niches within the biosystem as a whole. Past and current artificial life simulations lack the resources with which to grow niches and so to reproduce evolution’s complexity. We propose a more suitable simulation design integrating environments and organisms, allowing old niches to change and new ones to emerge. (shrink)

In this article we focus on the emergence of biological individuality by association, trying to formulate some theoretical conditions to think about the process of collective individualization. The starting point of our analysis is the notion of “major evolutionary transition.” A major evolutionary transition is the result of the integration of a multiplicity of initially independent biological entities that, by managing to organize their interactions, become a collective of components having an identity oriented towards a common goal. When biological organisms (...) are concerned, a major transition corresponds to a phenomenon of fusion between them. We shall argue that the emergence of a new biological level of individuality implies the establishment of constitutive relationships between individuals that change their status as autonomous entities. As a result, the emergence of a new type of entity in the living world implies that individuals enter into relationships that intrinsically transform them, a transformation sufficient for a “whole” to become a “part” that forms another “whole”, that is, a new level of organismality. (shrink)

The emergentist position that R. Keith Sawyer has formulated, nonreductive individualism, contains three propositions. First, that social characteristics must always be realized in individuals; second, that it is nevertheless possible to understand social properties as irreducible; and third, that therefore it is possible to demonstrate how social properties are able to exercise independent causal influences on individuals and their properties. It is demonstrated that Sawyer is not able to meet an objection that Kim has formulated against the analogous position in (...) the philosophy of mind. In his defense of the claim of irreducibility Sawyer refers to Fodor’s argument about multiple realizability, but this line of argument cannot preserve the claim for downward causation because Fodor’s claim for irreducibility rests on assumptions that are not compatible with a systematic formulation of downward causation. The article proposes a reading of Fodor’s argument that is consistent with individualism but not with nonreductive individualism. (shrink)

The nature and status of cultural evolution and its connection with biological evolution are controversial in part because of Richard Dawkin’s suggestion that the scientific study of culture should include “memetics,” an analog of genetics in which genes are replaced by “memes”—the hypothetical units of cultural evolution. Memetics takes different forms; I focus on its minimal form, which claims merely that natural selection shapes to some extent the evolution of some aspects of culture. Advocates and critics of memetics disagree about (...) the scientific status of memetics, but they agree that memetics must face the following fundamental problems. Problem 1: Cultural evolution differs too much from biological evolution. Problem 2: Culture is too complex. Problem 3: Memes are too difficult to identify and track. Problem 4: Memetics produces only trivial results. This paper examines these problems in the context of a minimal memetic analysis in one specific context: patented inventions. Technology is a special subset of culture, and patented inventions are a special subset of technology—not least because there is a detailed written record of every patent. I describe four recent empirical results on technological innovation derived from memetic analysis of the patent record. Result 1: Inkjet printing, PCR, and stents are key drivers of technological innovation. Result 2: Patent genealogies are tangled and incestuous. Result 3: Door-opening innovations drive the evolution of technology. Result 4: The evolving content of the drivers of innovation confirms the importance of inkjet printing, PCR, and stents, among other inventions. These results show that minimal memetics can provide a novel and illuminating analysis the evolution of patented technology. Furthermore, this memetic analysis can answer all of the main problems with memetics. Problem 1 can be dismissed because culture and biology can be quite disanalogous, provided that natural selection still operates in both. Problem 2 is a mirage, because memetic analysis of the patented inventions is consistent with the full richness and complexity of the evolution of technology. Problem 3 is easy to solve, because the patent record makes it trivial to identify and track patents and their key traits through lineages. Problem 4 can be fully answered only after memetic analysis becomes widespread, but the results reviewed here shows that minimal memetics does yield scientific results that are nontrivial and interesting. (shrink)

: Standard ethical frameworks struggle to deal with transhumanism, ecological issues and the rising technodiversity because they are focused on guiding and evaluating human behavior. Ethics needs its Copernican revolution to be able to deal with all moral agents, including not only humans, but also artificial intelligent agents, robots or organizations of all sizes. We argue that embracing the complexity worldview is the first step towards this revolution, and that standard ethical frameworks are still entrenched in the Newtonian worldview. We (...) first spell out the foundational assumptions of the Newtonian worldview, where all change is reduced to material particles following predetermined trajectories governed by the laws of nature. However, modern physical theories such as relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos theory and thermodynamics have drawn a much more confusing and uncertain picture, and inspired indecisive, subjectivist, relativist, nihilist or postmodern worldviews. Based on cybernetics, systems theory and the new sciences of complexity, we introduce the complexity worldview that sees the world as interactions and their emergent organizations. We use this complexity worldview to show the limitations of standard ethical frameworks such as deontology, theology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, evolutionary ethics and pragmatism. Keywords: Complexity, philosophy, ethics, cybernetics, transhumanism, universal ethics, systems ethics. (shrink)