Argumenta Philosophica最新文献

{"title":"Riflessioni sul concetto di natura in Lucio Anneo Seneca","authors":"M. Cassan","doi":"10.30687/978-88-6969-325-0/005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-325-0/005","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this short paper is to highlight nature’s central role in the constitution and progress of human morality, by analysing nature’s multiple characters as displayed in various sections of Seneca’s work. First, the focus will extend to man’s fundamental propensity to good, which belongs to him by nature. Secondly, a virtuous and happy life will be presented as the life led according to nature. In conclusion, research on natural phenomena will be accounted for, as a building block towards moral perfection. The relationship between all the previous traits, mentioned in the cited passages, constitutes the heart of Seneca’s ethical naturalism.","PeriodicalId":36843,"journal":{"name":"Argumenta Philosophica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86175677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"La Natura e il Metodo","authors":"Luigi Emilio Pischedda","doi":"10.30687/978-88-6969-325-0/008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-325-0/008","url":null,"abstract":"The naturalistic approach to knowledge, as emerges from of Quine’s and Sellars’ works, puts an absolute trust in the way science operates, insomuch that it suggests that philosophy should adopt its criteria and methods. This subsumption of philosophy to science is possible only reducing every discourse on their relationship to a mere question of method. This article aims to point out, by using Spinoza’s thought, the possibility of an escape from this rigid dichotomy. For the Dutch philosopher the study of nature is, in fact, the occasion for a broader consideration on the possibilities of knowledge in contributing to the achievement of an authentic freedom.","PeriodicalId":36843,"journal":{"name":"Argumenta Philosophica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74629575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Explanatory emergence as a guide to metaphysical structure","authors":"Elanor Taylor","doi":"10.21825/philosophica.82116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/philosophica.82116","url":null,"abstract":"The view that there is a distinction between strong, or metaphysical, emergence and weak, or explanatory, emergence, is widely accepted. It is natural, on this view, to regard accounts of strong and of weak emergence as performing different kinds of work, such that strong conceptions of emergence help us to uncover metaphysical structure, while weak conceptions of emergence help us to understand the limits of our scientific explanations. If we accept this division of labor, then it appears that we cannot use an account of weak, explanatory emergence to find out about metaphysical structure. In this paper, I explore the view that explanatory conceptions of emergence cannot be used for metaphysical purposes, and argue that it is false. Even those who reject strong emergence can, at least in principle, use certain explanatory accounts of emergence as guides to metaphysical structure. On this approach, emergence itself is explanatory, but explanatory emergence may sometimes obtain for metaphysical reasons.","PeriodicalId":36843,"journal":{"name":"Argumenta Philosophica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87182431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Strong emergence","authors":"Alexander D. Carruth, J. T. Miller","doi":"10.21825/philosophica.82115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/philosophica.82115","url":null,"abstract":"A crucial question for both philosophy and for science concerns the kind of relationship that obtains between entities—objects, properties, states, processes, kinds and so on—that exist at apparently higher and lower ‘levels’ of reality. According to reductionism, seeming higher-level entities can in fact be fully accounted for by more fundamental, lower-level entities. Conversely, emergentists of various stripes hold that whilst higher-level entities depend in some important sense on lower-level entities, they are nevertheless irreducible to them. This introductory paper outlines the context of the debate between emergentists and reductionists; offers a broad characterisation of ‘strong’ or ontological emergence, and provides summaries of each of the papers to come in this special issue. 6 A. D. CARRUTH AND J.T.M. MILLER 1. The structure of inquiry and the structure of the world Part of the job of scientific inquiry is to engage with, make sense of, describe, explain and make predictions concerning the wildly varied phenomena which constitute the world around us. As a consequence of this aforementioned variety, distinct disciplines each with their own intellectual regimes—domains of inquiry, basic assumptions, investigative techniques and so on—address different groupings of this phenomena. Thus, physics, or at least an important part of that discipline, is concerned with the properties of and interactions between the relatively small and simple constituents of matter, and of energy. Chemistry addresses more complexly structured systems of those constituents that form substances—in the standard, as opposed to technical metaphysical, sense: elements, compounds, mixtures, suspensions and so on. Biology treats phenomena which exhibit the characteristics which are criterial for life, ranging over micro-organisms, flora, fauna etc. Psychology and cognitive science engage with just those living things which possess mentality, and sociology, economics and political science all range over aspects of the interactions between these thinking agents. These characterisations are somewhat glib, and they surely fall short of a properly nuanced and comprehensive conception of each discipline, but hopefully they are fit for the illustrative purpose to which they are employed. That inquiry has this sort of structure raises a number of interesting philosophical questions. One such set of questions concerns the sorts of relationships that obtain between the theories put forward by each discipline. Another set of questions concerns the extent to which the sort of structure described above is a feature not just of the way we organise our inquiry into the world, but of the world itself: that is, addressing the","PeriodicalId":36843,"journal":{"name":"Argumenta Philosophica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75109550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Manipulationism and causal exclusion","authors":"M. Pexton","doi":"10.21825/philosophica.82110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/philosophica.82110","url":null,"abstract":"A new way of avoiding the causal exclusion argument in the context of manipulationism is proposed. In manipulationism, causal explanations are defined by counterfactual information accessed through manipulations. It is argued that the property of manipulability can be an emergent property of aggregate systems. Therefore, some causal explanations are non-reducible and causal exclusion is avoided. This emergentist notion of causal explanation addresses the question of how the special sciences can be based upon causal reasoning, even if fundamental physics is absent of causal relations.","PeriodicalId":36843,"journal":{"name":"Argumenta Philosophica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73944453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Strong emergence and downward causation in biological physics","authors":"T. McLeish","doi":"10.21825/philosophica.82113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/philosophica.82113","url":null,"abstract":"The methodological lens of physics within the realm of biology creates the interdisciplinary field of Biological Physics: a fruitful one with which to explore the idea of Strong Emergence. Examples of emergent entities are found in: e.g. protein assembly within cell membranes, gene expression from external cell signalling, topological interaction of DNA and topoisomerase enzymes. The flow of information (itself determined by constraints) is urged as an indicator for downward causation. Strongly emergent structures carry information at high (larger scale) level that is not constituted by the sum of information at low (smaller scale) levels. Biological physics throws empirical light on the metaphysical question of downward causation without having to broach the additional complexities and contested qualities of the mental. 114 T. C. B. McLEISH","PeriodicalId":36843,"journal":{"name":"Argumenta Philosophica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77620982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Language and ontological emergence","authors":"James Miller","doi":"10.21825/philosophica.82118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/philosophica.82118","url":null,"abstract":"Pre-Proof Version; Please cite final version forthcoming in Philosophica Abstract: Providing empirically supportable instances of ontological emergence is notoriously difficult. Typically, the literature has focused on two possible sources. The first is the mind and consciousness; the second is within physics, and more specifically certain quantum effects. In this paper, I wish to suggest that the literature has overlooked a further possible instance of emergence, taken from the special science of linguistics. In particular, I will focus on the property of truth-evaluability, taken to be a property of sentences as created by the language faculty within human minds (or brains). The claim will not be as strong as to suggest that the linguistic data and theories prove emergence. Rather the dialectical aim here is to say that we have some good reasons (even if not conclusive reasons) to think that the property is emergent.","PeriodicalId":36843,"journal":{"name":"Argumenta Philosophica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88307137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Strong emergence no, contextual emergence yes","authors":"M. Silberstein","doi":"10.21825/philosophica.82119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/philosophica.82119","url":null,"abstract":"It will be argued that strong/radical emergence while possible is problematic on a number of fronts, in particular it is neither explanatory nor unifying. Fortunately, there is a better, more unifying and explanatory alternative that be will called contextual emergence. The notion of contextual emergence will be explicated and defended against competitors.","PeriodicalId":36843,"journal":{"name":"Argumenta Philosophica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79531466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Must strong emergence collapse?","authors":"Umut Baysan, Jessica M. Wilson","doi":"10.21825/philosophica.82117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/philosophica.82117","url":null,"abstract":"There have recently been complaints from various quarters that strong \u0000emergence doesn’t make sense, on grounds that any purportedly strongly \u0000emergent features or associated powers can be se \u0000en to ‘collapse’, one way or \u0000another, into the lower \u0000- \u0000level base features upon which they depend. On one \u0000version of this collapse objection, certain ways of individuating lower \u0000- \u0000level \u0000physical features entail that such features will have dispositions to prod \u0000uce any \u0000purportedly strongly emergent features, undermining the supposed \u0000metaphysical novelty of the emergent features and the physical acceptability of \u0000the base features (see Howell 2009 and Taylor 2015). On another, certain ways of \u0000assigning powers to fe \u0000atures entail that lower \u0000- \u0000level physical features will inherit \u0000any powers had by purportedly strongly emergent features (see Kim, 1998 and \u00002006, and others). Here we present and defend four different responses that \u0000might be given to the collapse objection a \u0000s directed against a ‘novel power’ \u0000approach to strong emergence: first, distinguishing between direct and indirect \u0000having of powers; second, distinguishing between lightweight and heavyweight \u0000dispositions; third, taking strong emergence to be relative to s \u0000ets of fundamental \u0000interactions; fourth, taking strongly emergent features to be ‘new object \u0000entailing’, in ways that block lower \u0000- \u0000level inheritance of powers.","PeriodicalId":36843,"journal":{"name":"Argumenta Philosophica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73761876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Topological order and emergence","authors":"J. Bain","doi":"10.21825/philosophica.82112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/philosophica.82112","url":null,"abstract":"Topologically ordered systems play a prominent role in current research in condensed matter physics; examples include systems that exhibit the quantum Hall effect, topological insulators, and topological superconductors. These systems possess properties that are characterized by topological invariants, exhibit phase transitions that cannot be characterized by spontaneous symmetry breaking, and exhibit order that cannot be characterized in terms of a local order parameter. They thus fall outside the scope of the Landau–Ginsburg theory of phase transitions, which, arguably, has informed much of the discussion, in both the physics and philosophy literature, of emergence in condensed matter systems. Nevertheless, some authors have claimed that topologically ordered systems exhibit emergence. This essay offers a critical assessment of this claim. In particular, it identifies two types of topological order and observes that, whereas the alleged mechanisms underwriting these types differ, they nevertheless share certain features; in particular, the lowenergy behavior of such systems can be described by effective topological quantum field theories. This suggests that a unified account of the emergence of topological order should look to a law-centric, as opposed to a mechanismcentric, view of emergence.","PeriodicalId":36843,"journal":{"name":"Argumenta Philosophica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74938578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}