•  4
    Every manifestation of information, semiosis and meaning we have been able to study experimentally has a physical form. Neglect of their dynamical (energetic) ground tends towards dualism or idealism, leaving the causal basis of semiosis and the causal powers of representations mysterious. Consideration of the necessary physical requirements for the embodiment of semiotic categories imposes a discipline on semiotics required for its integration into the rest of science, especially for the emergi…Read more
  •  16
    A Dynamical Account of Emergence
    Cybernetics and Human Knowing 15 (3-4): 75-86. 2008.
    Emergence has traditionally been described as satisfying specific properties, notably nonreducibility of the emergent object or properties to their substrate, novelty, and unpredictability from the properties of the substrate. Sometimes more mysterious properties such as independence from the substrate, separate substances and teleological properties are invoked. I will argue that the latter are both unnecessary and unwarranted. The descriptive properties can be analyzed in more detail in logica…Read more
  •  10
    differential from bottom to top, depth of fluid, and the coefficients of expansion, viscosity and thermal Bénard convection, is one of the more intensely conductivity of the fluid. Even though it is a simple studied dissipative systems, both theoretically and..
  •  1
    Prospects for Reconciling Sellars' World Images
    South African Journal of Philosophy 29 (4): 343-356. 2010.
    Almost fifty years ago Wilfrid Sellars described two competing ways of imagining the world, the Manifest Image and the Scientific Image. The Manifest Image is an idealization of common sense aided by critical philosophy, whereas the Scientific Image is the product of our best science. The methodologies of the two images are very different: the Manifest Image deals with experience and looks only at relations among bits of experience and analysis of experience into the relations that must lie behi…Read more
  •  10
  •  7
    Holism and Emergence: Dynamical Complexity Defeats Laplace’s Demon
    South African Journal of Philosophy 30 (2): 229-243. 2011.
    The paradigm of Laplacean determinism combines three regulative principles: determinism, predictability, and the explanatory adequacy of universal laws together with purely local conditions. Historically, it applied to celestial mechanics, but it has been expanded into an ideal for scientific theories whose cogency is often not questioned. Laplace’s demon is an idealization of mechanistic scientific method. Its principles together imply reducibility, and rule out holism and emergence. I will arg…Read more
  •  24
    Against standard approaches to evolution and ethics, this book develops the idea that moral values may find their origin in regularly recurring features in the cooperative environments of species of organisms that are social and intelligent. Across a wide range of species that are social and intelligent, possibilities arise for helping others, responding empathetically to the needs of others, and playing fairly. The book identifies these underlying environmental regularities as biological natura…Read more
  •  25
    A system is autonomous if it uses its own information to modify itself and its environment to enhance its survival, responding to both environmental and internal stimuli to modify its basic functions to increase its viability. Autonomy is the foundation of functionality, intentionality and meaning. Autonomous systems accommodate the unexpected through self-organizing processes, together with some constraints that maintain autonomy. Early versions of autonomy, such as autopoiesis and closure to e…Read more
  •  142
    Two Faces of Maxwell's Demon Reveal the Nature of Irreversibility
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 21 (2): 257. 1990.
    demon thought experiment remains ambiguous even today. One of the most delightful thought It seems that Maxwell originally invoked experiments in the history of physical science is..
  •  5
    How Not to Defend Metaphysical Realism
    Southwest Philosophy Review 3 19-27. 1986.
  •  7
    Tachyons and Causal Theories of Space-Time
    Philosophie Et Culture: Actes du XVIIe Congrès Mondial de Philosophie 3 155-159. 1988.
  • Paul Thompson, The Structure of Biological Theories (review)
    Philosophy in Review 10 163-165. 1990.
  • Paul Humphreys, The Chances of Explanation (review)
    Philosophy in Review 11 257-259. 1991.
  •  13
    The Biology of Moral Systems (review)
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (2): 195-210. 1991.
  •  3
    Pragmatic Incommensurability
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1984. 1984.
    Kuhn's incommensurability thesis has generally been interpreted by friends and foes alike so as to preclude direct rational communication across revolutionary divides in science. In this paper, a weaker form of incommensurability is sketched which allows eventual comparison of incommensurable theories, but is consistent with Kuhn's model of science. Incommensurability occurs whenever the knowledge or ability to translate from the language of one theory to that of another is lacking. It can be re…Read more
  •  33
    Goodman’s account of the ‘grue’ paradox stands at a crossroads in the history of twentieth century epistemology. Published in 1954, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast is a reaction to the logical empiricist views that held sway in the first half of the last century and anticipates many of the conventionalist and/or relativist moves popular throughout the second half. Through his evaluation of Hume’s problem of induction, as well as his own novel reformulation of it, Goodman comes to reject a number of …Read more
  •  17
    Wilfrid Sellars described his Manifest Image and Scientific Image as idealizations of our common sense and scientific views of the world, including our own special role in the world as humans. If, as Sellars suggested, there is an irreconcilable conflict between these images, it may not be possible to reconcile science with common sense. The Scientific Image, as we have inherited it, has a strong reductionist element that seems to imply that things are not really as they appear to common sense. …Read more
  •  11
    Is there any virtue in modern science?
    Biology and Philosophy 15 (5): 773-784. 2000.
  •  17
    Information is commonly understood as knowledge or facts acquired or derived from, e.g., study, instruction or observation (Macmillan Contemporary Dictionary, 1979). On this notion, information is presumed to be both meaningful and veridical, and to have some appropriate connection to its object; it is concerned with representations and symbols in the most general sense MacKay 1969 ). Information might be misleading, but it can never be false. Deliberately misleading data is misinformation. The …Read more
  •  5
    Biological Information
    with Werner Callebaut
    Biological Theory 1 (3): 221-223. 2006.
  •  13
    Entropy in evolution
    Biology and Philosophy 1 (1): 5-24. 1986.
    Daniel R. Brooks and E. O. Wiley have proposed a theory of evolution in which fitness is merely a rate determining factor. Evolution is driven by non-equilibrium processes which increase the entropy and information content of species together. Evolution can occur without environmental selection, since increased complexity and organization result from the likely capture at the species level of random variations produced at the chemical level. Speciation can occur as the result of variation within…Read more
  •  25
    The Biology of Moral Systems (review)
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (2): 195-210. 1991.
  •  51
    Causation is the transfer of information
    In Howard Sankey (ed.), Causation and Laws of Nature, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 215--245. 1999.
  •  5
    Formal pragmatics plays an important, though secondary, role in modern analytical philosophy of language: its aim is to explain how context can affect the meaning of certain special kinds of utterances. During recent years, the adequacy of formal tools has come under attack, often leading to one or another form of relativism or antirealism.1 Our aim will be to extend the critique to formal pragmatics while showing that sceptical conclusions can be avoided by developing a different approach to th…Read more
  •  6
    The subject of this chapter is the identity of individual dynamical objects and properties. Two problems have dominated the literature: transtemporal identity and the relation between composition and identity. Most traditional approaches to identity rely on some version of classification via essential or typical properties, whether nominal or real. Nominal properties have the disadvantage of producing unnatural classifications, and have several other problems. Real properties, however, are often…Read more