- Title Pages
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Sources
- Introduction
- Introduction to Philosophical Perspectives on Emergence
-
1 The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism -
2 On the Idea of Emergence -
3 Reductionism and the Irreducibility of Consciousness -
4 Emergence and Supervenience -
5 Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence -
6 How Properties Emerge -
7 Making Sense of Emergence Jaegwon Kim -
8 Downward Causation and Autonomy in Weak Emergence -
9 Real Patterns - Introduction to Scientific Perspectives on Emergence
-
10 More is Different: Broken Symmetry and the Nature of the Hierarchical Structure of Science -
11 Emergence -
12 Sorting and Mixing: Race and Sex -
13 Alternative Views of Complexity Herbert Simon -
14 The Theory of Everything -
15 Is Anything Ever New? Considering Emergence -
16 Design, Observation, Surprise! A Test of Emergence -
17 Ansatz for Dynamical Hierarchies - Introduction to Background and Polemics
-
18 Newtonianism, Reductionism and the Art of Congressional Testimony -
19 Issues in the Logic of Reductive Explanations -
20 Chaos -
21 Undecidability and Intractability in Theoretical Physics -
22 Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis) -
23 Supervenience -
24 The Nonreductivist’s Troubles with Mental Causation - Annotated Bibliography
- About the Authors
- Index
Real Patterns
Real Patterns
This chapter questions the reality of beliefs in relation to philosophy and science. Generally, philosophers agree that there can be only two possibilities: either beliefs exist or they do not. There is no such state as quasi existence since there are no stable doctrines of semirealism. Beliefs must either be vindicated or banished. There is a conviction which prevails, to the effect that when it comes to beliefs, one must be either a realist or an eliminative materialist. The chapter aims to dispel the misconceptions that have led to the proliferation of “ontological positions” about beliefs, such as the different grades or kinds of realism. Five quintessential examples are the main focus: Fodor’s Realism, Davidson’s realism, the author’s realism, Richard Rorty’s irrealism, and Paul Churchland’s eliminative materialism.
Keywords: reality of beliefs, quasi existence, semirealism, realist, eliminative materialist, Fodor, Davidson, Richard Rorty, Paul Churchland
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- Title Pages
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Sources
- Introduction
- Introduction to Philosophical Perspectives on Emergence
-
1 The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism -
2 On the Idea of Emergence -
3 Reductionism and the Irreducibility of Consciousness -
4 Emergence and Supervenience -
5 Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence -
6 How Properties Emerge -
7 Making Sense of Emergence Jaegwon Kim -
8 Downward Causation and Autonomy in Weak Emergence -
9 Real Patterns - Introduction to Scientific Perspectives on Emergence
-
10 More is Different: Broken Symmetry and the Nature of the Hierarchical Structure of Science -
11 Emergence -
12 Sorting and Mixing: Race and Sex -
13 Alternative Views of Complexity Herbert Simon -
14 The Theory of Everything -
15 Is Anything Ever New? Considering Emergence -
16 Design, Observation, Surprise! A Test of Emergence -
17 Ansatz for Dynamical Hierarchies - Introduction to Background and Polemics
-
18 Newtonianism, Reductionism and the Art of Congressional Testimony -
19 Issues in the Logic of Reductive Explanations -
20 Chaos -
21 Undecidability and Intractability in Theoretical Physics -
22 Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis) -
23 Supervenience -
24 The Nonreductivist’s Troubles with Mental Causation - Annotated Bibliography
- About the Authors
- Index
