The metaphysics of emergence /
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Palgrave Macmillan,
2015.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
Table of Contents:
- PART I: PROCESSES AND ENTITIES
- 1.1 Change and Stability
- 1.2 The Need for a New Metaphysics
- 1.3 An Overview of the Project
- 1.4 A Terminological Difficulty
- PART II: THE METAPHYSICS OF PARTICULAR ENTITIES
- 2.1 The Reification of Being and the Unreality of Change
- 2.2 The Invention of the Timeless
- 2.3 Entity as the Primary Category
- 2.4 Entities as Countable Particulars
- 2.5 The Invention of Material
- 2.6 Explaining Change
- 2.7 The Disintegration of the Aristotelian Explanatory Model
- 2.8 Descartes' Metaphysical Dichotomy
- 2.9 Locke, Newton and the 'Corpuscular Philosophy'
- 2.10 The Rise of Physicalist Metaphysics
- PART III: CONCEPTUAL SHIFTS IN PHYSICS
- 3.1 The Invention of Physical Science
- 3.2 The Fate of 'Matter'
- 3.3 The Superseding of Newtonian Physics
- 3.4 Reconceptualizing 'Particles'
- 3.5 'Particles' and Quantum Fields
- 3.6 Conceptualizing Quantum Phenomena
- 3.7 Realist Interpretations of QFT
- 3.8 Metaphysical Implications
- PART IV: THE CATEGORY OF GENERIC PROCESSES
- 4.1 Processes, Stuffs, and Particulars
- 4.2 Generic and Specific Processes
- 4.3 Identifying Categories
- 4.4 The Logic of Process-descriptions
- 4.5 Processes, Entities, and their Parts
- 4.6 Re-categorizing Countables
- 4.7 The 'Part-of' Relation
- 4.8 Processes and Series of Events
- 4.9 Whitehead's Process Metaphysics
- PART V: IDENTITY THROUGH CHANGE
- 5.1 Identity and Discernible Difference
- 5.2 Identity as Continuity of Temporal Parts
- 5.3 Change in Four-dimensional Entities
- 5.4 Common Assumptions
- 5.5 Heraclitus' Insight
- 5.6 Change in Enduring Entities
- 5.7 Sameness across Different Times
- 5.8 The Types of Generic Process
- PART VI: A METAPHYSICAL TAXONOMY OF EMERGENT ENTITIES
- 6.1 Processes and their Organizations
- 6.2 Persistence and Stability
- 6.3 Entities as Cohesive Organizations of Processes
- 6.4 Energy-wells
- 6.5 Far-from-Equilibrium Stability
- 6.6 Self-maintenant Systems
- 6.7 Recursively Self-maintenant Systems
- 6.8 The Status of the Concept of Recursive Self-maintenance
- PART VII: AN EVOLUTIONARY TAXONOMY OF TYPES OF ACTION AND LIFE
- 7.1 Agency and Causation
- 7.2 Goal-Directedness
- 7.3 Serving a Function
- 7.4 Liability to Error
- 7.5 Minimal Action
- 7.6 Selective Action
- 7.7 Error Detection
- 7.8 Flexible Learners
- 7.9 Self-reflective Persons interacting with Externalized Knowledge
- 7.10 Social Institutions and Groups
- 7.11 Conclusion
- PART VIII: THE CONCEPT OF EMERGENCE
- 8.1 Clarifying the Issues
- 8.2 'Emergence Bases' and Open Systems
- 8.3 A Definition of Emergence
- 8.4 Emergence and Non-linearity
- 8.5 Self-organization
- 8.6 Emergence and Reduction
- 8.7 Emergence and the Causal Exclusion Argument
- 8.8 Downward Causation and Physical Laws
- PART IX: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PHYSICALISM
- 9.1 Defining Physicalism in terms of 'Physical Objects'
- 9.2 Defining Physicalism in terms of Physical Theory
- 9.3 Mereological Supervenience
- 9.4 The Irreducibility of Actions
- 9.5 Non-reductive Supervenience
- 9.6 Humean Supervenience
- 9.7 Global Supervenience
- 9.8 Basic Particulars
- 9.9 Physicalism without Particulars?
- PART X: THE MENTAL ACTIVITY OF HUMAN BEINGS
- 10.1 Intentionality and Mental Content
- 10.2 Correspondence Accounts of Representations
- 10.3 The Interactive Model of Representations
- 10.4 The Emergence of Awareness
- 10.5 The 'Hard Problem' of Consciousness
- 10.6 Sensory Experience
- 10.7 The Emergence of Reflective Consciousness
- 10.8 Rationality
- 10.9 Being Conscious of Oneself
- PART XI: FURTHER REFLECTIONS
- 11.1 Time
- 11.2 The Puzzle about Entropy
- 11.3 The Emergence of Values
- 11.4 Freedom and Causation
- 11.5 Concluding Reflections.