PHILOSOPHY 302 (2014-1): EMERGENCE AS AN EXPLANATORY CONCEPT

 

INSTRUCTOR:  Phil Hanson; Off: WMX 5648;  Ph: 778-782-3330 (Philosophy Gen: -3343); Hrs: Wed. 1:30-3:00, Fri. 1:30-3:00, or by appointment; E-mail: hanson@sfu.ca

 

REQUIRED TEXT (hereafter ‘T’):  Emergence; Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science,  Mark A. Bedau and Paul Humphries (eds.);  Bradford/MIT (2008), plus materials with its associated website (hereafter ‘W’): http://mitpress.mit.edu/emergence

 

(A good first step:  read the Introductions to the text and its sections, and peruse the website.)

 

Other readings to be made available by instructor include:

 

Michael Polyani, “Life’s Irreducible Structure”, Science, 160 (3834) (1968) pp. 1308-1312

 

Andy Clark, “Happy Couplings: Emergence and Explanatory Interlock”, from Readings in the Philosophy of Artificial Life, Margaret Boden (ed.) Oxford University Press (1996) pp. 262-281.

 

Stuart Kaufman, “Antichaos and Adaptation” Scientific American, (August 1991) pp. 78-84.

 

David Chalmers, “Strong and Weak Emergence”, in The Re-emergence of Emergence, P. Clayton and P. Davies (eds.)  Oxford University Press (2006)

 

Terrence W. Deacon,  “Emergence: The Hole at the Wheel’s Hub,”  in Clayton and Davies, op. cit..

 

Daniel Heard, “A New Problem For Ontological Emergence”, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 56 No. 222 (January, 2006), pp. 55-62.

 

Robert Batterman, “Multiple Realizability and Universality”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 51 (2000) pp. 115-145.

 

GRADE COMPONENTS: There will be 2 short papers (about 2000 words) assignments, worth 25% each, and a final paper worth 40%.  The remaining 10% will be for class participation. 

 

Tentative dates for the distribution of topics for each assignment:

 

Assignment #1:  January 24th (Due in class Fri. February 7th)

Assignment #2:  February 21 (Due in class Fri. Mary 7th)

Assignment #3:  March 7th   (Due in instructor’s Dept. Mailbox by 4:00 PM on the last

 day of classes, Wednesday April 9th.)

 

READINGS (tentative):

 

UNIT 1: 

 

T: chs. 1-4, 22; 

 

W (under ‘Philosophical Resources’):  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (hereafter ‘SEP’) article,  “Emergent Properties”; Stephen Pepper, “Emergence”, and P. Meehl and W. Sellars, “The Concept of Emergence”.  (Note that the Mill exerpt and the Morgan and Broad monographs, which are also available here, are discussed both in the SEP article and in ch. 1 of T, i.e. McLaughlin’s “The Rise and Fall of British Emergence”.)

 

UNIT 2:

 

T:  CHS. 5-9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 20.  plus Polyani and Kaufmann (see above)

 

                  W (under ‘Scientific Resources’):  Conway’s ‘Game of Life’, etc..

 

UNIT 3: 

 

T:  chs: 8, 16, 24 plus Clark, Chalmers, Deacon, Heard, Batterman (see above)

 

Note:  Topics for Assignment 1 will be drawn from Unit 1 and for Assignment 2 will be drawn from Unit 2.

 

 

Some issues to be explored:

 

ontological versus epistemological construals of emergence;

the relation between emergence and supervenience,  

the idea of hierarchical ‘levels ‘ of structure;

complexity, and ‘self-organisational’ conceptions of emergence;

the role of mathematical modeling (versus causal modeling) in explanatory appeals

        to emergence

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