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Analyses the ongoing scientific debates surrounding reduction and emergence, arguing that these debates are empirically resolvable.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Preface; Introduction; Part I. Groundwork: 1. Scientific composition, the universe and everything: or, reductionism and emergentism in the sciences and philosophy; 2. A beginning framework for scientific composition; Part II. The Roots of Reduction: 3. How to be a scientific reductionist: defending 'nothing but' claims and an ultimate scientific image; 4. Understanding scientific reductionism: fundamentalist views of ontology, laws, theories, and methodology; Part III. The Fruits of Emergence: 5. The varieties of emergence: their natures, purposes and obligations; 6. A whole lot more from 'nothing but': conditioned aggregation, machresis and the possibility of strong emergence; 7. Understanding scientific emergentism: a mutualist nature and its interdependent levels, laws and sciences; Part IV. New Landscapes, New Horizons: 8. Our competing visions of nature and the sciences: illuminating the deeper debates and viable positions; 9. Making the issues concrete: the scientific hypotheses and their empirical differences; 10. The age of reduction versus the age of emergence: what has been successfully shown from the sciences (so far); Glossary; Bibliography; Index.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Carl Gillett is Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University. He is the editor of Physicalism and its Discontents (with Barry Loewer, Cambridge, 2001) and has published numerous articles in journals, including Analysis, The Journal of Philosophy, Mind and Language, Philosophical Psychology and Synthese.
Zusammenfassung
This book analyses the ongoing scientific debates surrounding reduction and emergence, arguing that these debates can be empirically resolved. Providing new theoretical frameworks from which to understand these debates, this book will be valuable reading for researchers and advanced students of the philosophy of science and metaphysics.
