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34Emergence and reflexive downward causationPrincipia 6 (1): 183-202. 2002.This paper responds to Jaegwon Kim's powerful objection to the very possibility of genuinely novel emergent properties. Kim argues that the incoherence of reflexive downward causation means that the causal power of an emergent phenomenon is ultimately reducible to the causal powers of its constituents. I offer a simple argument showing how to characterize emergent properties m terms of the effects of structural relations an the causal powers of that. constituents
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59A Computational Modeling Strategy for LevelsPhilosophy of Science 75 (5): 608-620. 2008.Rather than taking the ontological fundamentality of an ideal microphysics as a starting point, this article sketches an approach to the problem of levels that swaps assumptions about ontology for assumptions about inquiry. These assumptions can be implemented formally via computational modeling techniques that will be described below. It is argued that these models offer a way to save some of our prominent commonsense intuitions concerning levels. This strategy offers a way of exploring the ind…Read more
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37The individuality of artifacts and organismsHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32 (2-3). 2010.
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267Limiting SkepticismLogos and Episteme 2 (2). 2011.Skeptics argue that the acquisition of knowledge is impossible given the standing possibility of error. We present the limiting convergence strategy for responding to skepticism and discuss the relationship between conceivable error and an agent’s knowledge in the limit. We argue that the skeptic must demonstrate that agents are operating with a bad method or are in an epistemically cursed world. Such demonstration involves a significant step beyond conceivability and commits the skeptic to pote…Read more
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20Giandomenico Sica’s volume is a collection of eleven papers on category theory by philosophers, mathematicians, and mathematical physicists. In addition to papers of direct interest to philosophers of mathematics, the volume contains some introductory expositions of category theory along with a valuable discussion of the relationship between category theory and physics by Bob Coecke. While there are several technically difficult papers, the volume as a whole is reasonably accessible to those wit…Read more
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15Functionalism in the philosophy of mind rests on the claim that mental states are multiply realizable; mental states can be realized by or instantiated in a variety of distinct physical structures. To see them as multiply realizable we take mental states as causal roles rather than particular physical structures. As such, functionalism can be contrasted with metaphysical accounts which treat mental states as instances of a mental substance. Instead of puzzling over the relationship between menta…Read more
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248Computational Models of Emergent PropertiesMinds and Machines 18 (4): 475-491. 2008.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…Read more
Lawrence, Kansas, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |