The essay that follows discusses an ordered series of situated environmental “fields” that comprise John Dewey’s “emergent naturalism.” These fields include nature, experience, mind, subconscious, consciousness, and cognitive thought. I propose an order to these fields, and provide an overview of the ways in which fields that are larger in scope stand as the conditions for those that are more limited. I also suggest ways in which cognitive thought further emerges through the process of inquiry. This emergent (...) scheme culminates in a type of inquiry where an agent actively creates conflict in order to enrich experience. (shrink)

This paper offers a defense of naturalism, which might improve its chance of being adopted as a direction, both for theory and for empirical research. This defense responds in particular to three themes:: the emergence of mind , the pervasiveness of nonlinearity in biology and psychology, and the need for levels and degrees of self . Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in (...) 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

Complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman writes Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion to defend ontological emergence and refute theism. He argues naturalistic emergentism is the preferable alternative to a naturalistic reductionism that views all reality as reducible to particles in motion. Among the central claims naturalistic emergentists make is that they have built their worldview on the firm foundations of science. In this paper I argue that naturalistic theories of ontological emergence are incompatible with the philosophical (...) preconditions necessary for practicing science. (shrink)

While the topics of emergentism and religious naturalism have both received renewed attention in the past two decades, the recent publication of several books and numerous articles arguing for emergentism and its religious significance suggests that they are converging in interesting ways. Indeed, religious naturalists such as cell biologist Ursula Goodenough, complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman, and philosopher Loyal Rue have been important voices in this conversation. While they cannot be easily classified as religious naturalists, biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon and (...) theologian and philosopher Philip Clayton have also made significant contributions. (shrink)

In his “Are Properties, Particular, Universal, or Neither?” Javier Cumpa argues that science not metaphysics explains how properties are instantiated. I accept this conclusion provided physics can be stated using rather few primitive predicates. In addition, he uses his scientific theory of instantiation to argue for Neutralism, his thesis that the “tie” between properties and their instances implies neither that properties are particular nor that they are universals. Neutralism, I claim, is a thesis that realist about universals have independent reason (...) to accept and their opponents have reason to reject. So, neutralism is not neutral on the topic of whether properties are universals. Nor is Cumpa’s Theory of Instantiation as naturalistic as he claims. I argue that although compatible with Ontological Naturalism, his theory provides a precedent for the non-naturalistic emergence of mental properties. Finally, I argue that because his theory requires a simple physics it presupposes a more rationalist epistemology than that of Methodological Naturalism. (shrink)

The development of a methodologically naturalistic approach to physiological and experimental psychology in the nineteenth century was not primarily driven by a naturalistic agenda. The work of R. Hermann Lotze and G. T. Fechner help to illustrate this claim. I examine a selected set of central commitments in each thinkers philosophical outlook, particularly regarding the human soul and the nature of God, that departed strongly from a reductionist materialism. Yet, each contributed significantly to the formation of experimental and physiological psychology. (...) Their work was influenced substantively by their respective philosophical commitments. Nevertheless, the evaluation of the merits of their specific proposals, Fechner's psychophysics and Lotze's local sign hypothesis respectively, did not depend upon sharing their metaphysical views regarding the human soul or the nature of God. A moderate, but significant, distinction between the contexts of discovery and of justification aids in understanding this balancing act. (shrink)

I argue (1) that Searle's reductive stance about mental causation is unwarranted on evolutionary, logical, and neuroscientific grounds; and (2) that his theory of weak emergence, called biological naturalism, fails to provide a satisfactory account of objectual unity and subject unity. Finally I propose a stronger variety of emergence called emergent subject dualism (ESD) to fill the gaps in Searle's account, and support ESD on grounds of recent evidence in neuroscience. Hence I show how it is possible, if (...) not also theoretically preferable, to go from Searle's biological naturalism to emergent subject dualism. (shrink)

We begin by treating the antinaturalism of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, and follow that by considering the recent project of “naturalizing phenomenology.” As a transitional figure, we treat Hans Jonas and the weakly emergent status he allows organismic life. In a section on “affirmative naturalism,” we treat Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, and Gilles Deleuze, emphasizing their relation to Spinoza's ethics of joy. We conclude by considering the antinaturalism of continental philosophy positions in critical race theory (Linda Alcoff), gender theory (...) (Judith Butler), and disability studies (Shelley Tremain). (shrink)

Develops and defends a philosophical account of meaning, purpose, and value in human life and experience that is naturalistic without being reductionistic or scientistic.

Building the Moral Community is an exploration of naturalistic ethics, offering a modified classical analytic philosophy exploration of morality that is consistent with emerging thinking in psychology, neurobiology, game theory, and self-adjusting systems.

Many philosophers equate naturalism with physicalism. Non‐reductive naturalists object that physicalism is inadequate to human agency. Despite their disagreement, both labor under a vestigial Cartesianism that regards the human mind as the sole exception in an otherwise monolithic physical nature. But nonhuman nature is complex, exhibits emergence, and requires multiple sciences. This paper argues that nonhuman nature cannot be adequately understood by physicalism with its doctrine of the causal closure of the physical. At the same time, non‐reductive naturalism (...) cannot deny the dependence of human processes on nonhuman nature. A pluralistic naturalism can acknowledge this dependency without accepting physicalism. The Cartesian ghost can only be exorcized by thinking through the complexity of the nonhuman nature that is our home. This permits us to accept the realist, albeit fallibilist, truth of human cognition of the nature that evolved it. (shrink)

I examine how a naturalist worldview informs work in philosophy of mind with a special focus on the appropriateness of a naturalist adopting emergent properties in his or her ontology. First, I examine two versions of naturalism construed as worldviews and clarify their differences. I argue that one of these versions is what naturalists ought to embrace. Happily, most but not all naturalists recognize this. To defend this claim, I will lay out certain epistemic criteria that are helpful (...) in adjudicating between rival scientific and philosophical paradigms. These criteria will contribute to supporting my preference for which version of naturalism is preferable. Next, I present a general depiction of the components and inner logic of a naturalistic worldview and follow this by providing a precise notion of an emergent property. Finally, I offer several criticisms of emergent properties and conclude that a naturalist ought to avoid them. (shrink)

'Naturalism and Pragmatism' offers reflections on the pragmatic tradition from a fresh perspective: that of a working neuroscientist. Though naturalism and evolution are not the only topics of discussions, they are important themes of the book. Both pragmatism and modern behavioral science grew up in the wake of Darwin's theory of evolution. Indeed it is impossible to imagine either without evolutionary theory and the more general nineteenth-century trend of naturalism from which modern evolutionary theory emerged. And yet, (...) for a variety of reasons, these common origins have not ensured a close affinity between pragmatic philosophy and the behavioral sciences. Among the wide diversity of scientific theories of human cognition and its form, which embraces the full range of human experience. Thus this book presents not only a scientist's take on the pragmatic tradition, but also a pragmatist's take on the evolution of the human problem solving"--Publisher's description, back cover. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider a challenge that naturalism poses for embodied cognition and enactivism, as well as for work on phenomenology of the body that has an argumentative or explanatory dimension. It concerns the connection between embodiment and emergence. In the commitment to explanatory holism, and the irreducibility of embodiment to any mechanistic and/or neurocentric construal of the interactions of the component parts, I argue there is (often, if not always) an unavowed dependence on an epistemic and metaphysical (...) role for emergence, especially concerning certain embodied capacities (motor-intentionality, know-how, skilful habits, affordances, etc.). While the problem of emergence is standardly dismissed as a problem for phenomenology, which brackets away the kind of materialist (and scientific) picture from which reflection on emergence derives, I argue that once a phenomenologist takes a fully-fledged embodied turn, they also have a genuine dilemma of emergence to confront, and I evaluate the relevant options. (shrink)

오늘날 한국 철학계에서 사용하고 있는 “자연주의”라는 말은 서구 철학에서 논의되는 내츄럴리즘(Naturalism)보다 더 다양한 의미를 지니고 있기에 동서철학의 교차 토론에서 자주 개념적 혼란이 빚어진다. 그 주요 원인은 한국어 사용자에게 음미되고 받아들여져 온 전통적인 “自然” 개념이 “대상적 세계의 총칭”을 뜻하는 근대어로서의 “자연” 개념과 일치하지 않기 때문이다. 이 논문에서는 동아시아에서 “자연” 개념의 성숙과 확산 과정에서 발신자 역할을 했던 도가의 “자연” 개념을 살펴보고, 오늘날 유행하는 내츄럴리즘 혹은 피지컬리즘(physicalism)에 입각한 “자연주의” 담론으로는 도가를 자연주의라고도 반자연주의라고도 분류할 수 없음을 지적한다. 그렇다고 해서 도가의 “자연”이 반현대적이거나 반과학적인 (...) 것은 아니며 오히려 “창발적 자연주의”와 같은 새로운 형태의 자연주의 개념을 이해하고 발전시키는데 중요한 참조가 될 수 있음을 주장한다. (shrink)

Abstract.This article is a brief overview and positive assessment of Arthur Peacocke's essay “A Naturalistic Christian Faith for the Twenty‐First Century.” Here Peacocke further develops his panentheist account of God and provides significant reinterpretations of a number of Christian doctrines using the concept of emergent levels of complex reality with downward efficacy on their constituents.

This article addresses a complex nexus of discourse and praxis: varying Enlightenment visions of Man; emergent ideas about human differences; and encounters between European scientific voyagers and Indigenous people in New Holland (Australia) and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) at the start of the nineteenth century. Discursively, I trace two strands of ?anthropological? thinking. One, philosophical and economic, is epitomized in French and Scottish stadial theory. The other is naturalist and culminated in Buffon's natural history of man. Both were appropriated (...) from the late eighteenth century by a nascent science of race. With respect to praxis, I chart the reciprocal impact of metropolitan theory, antipodean experience and local agency by selective comparison of materials produced by the voyages of Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin in Australian waters in 1801?1803. (shrink)

This article introduces a novel use of technologies to visualize space and temporary structures in public space as a critical and speculative method for artistic research. Imitation and iconification have been vital in visual culture since civilization began. Science has become proficient in picturing invisible matter and numerical data. However, we are limited to visualizing these data in an iconic, ‘understandable’ way, that is, to some extent, reductionist. A non-naturalistic artistic visualization (NNAVi) method is proposed to discover and present the (...) underlying context of objects and space. First, this article discusses the representational function of artistic images and the artistic use of emerging technologies to represent invisible information. Following the discussion, the case study of the virtual reality (VR) artwork The Last Recreational Land shows how NNAVi can be applied. The case study starts with an exploration of the pandemic’s context and nature and then moves to an explanation of the multisensory and immersive setting of the artwork. Interweaving case studies and theoretical references, the article elaborates on how the VR experience is used as a device to respond to the pandemic. By deconstructing the relationship between visualization, imitation and iconification, the article theorizes NNAVi as a new methodology for artistic research that provides tangible insights into the nature of the pandemic. (shrink)

Chapter INTRODUCTION: OTTO NEURATH, THE VIENNA CIRCLE AND THE PROTOCOL SENTENCE DEBATE Everybody familiar with contemporary analytical philosophy is likely ...

In this paper, we propose three lines of argumentation against Nannini’s eliminativist approach towards consciousness and the Self. First, we argue that the premises he uses to argue for eliminativism can equally well be used to draw a completely different conclusion in favor of naturalistic dualism according to which phenomenal consciousness irreducibly emerges from a physical substrate by virtue of certain psychophysical laws of nature. Nannini proposes that in contrast to dualistic theses which represent the manifest image of the world, (...) eliminativism represents the world’s scientific image just as classical physics and theories of relativity respectively represent the world’s manifest image and scientific image. And if developments in a scientific field reveal a conflict between these two images we should always vote for the scientific image. In our second line of argument, we challenge this claim by comparing two rival interpretations of quantum mechanics, i.e. the Copenhagen and Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics. Finally, we argue that Nannini’s identification of consciousness and the Self as illusions does not shed any light on the hard problem of consciousness since illusions themselves are instances of phenomenal experiences and need to be explained. (shrink)

An emerging body of research suggests that psychedelic experiences can change users’ religious or metaphysical beliefs. Here I explore issues concerning psychedelic-induced belief change via a critique of some recent arguments by Wayne Glausser. Two scientific studies seem to show that psychedelic experiences can convert atheists to belief in God, but Glausser holds that academic and popular discussions of these studies are misleading. I offer a different analysis of the relevant findings, attempting to preserve the insights of Glausser’s critique while (...) setting the record straight on some important points. For one thing, the studies provide stronger evidence for atheist deconversion than Glausser allows. For another, Glausser’s arguments against the “Metaphysical Belief Theory” of psychedelic therapy involve scientifically dubious claims and inferences. Finally, in evaluating this theory, we ought to focus on its strongest version, which posits belief shifts from metaphysical naturalism to non-naturalism, rather than from atheism to classical monotheism. (shrink)

Skepticism and naturalism bear important connections with one another. Do they conflict or are they different sides of the same coin? In this paper, by considering the ways in which Sextus and Hume have examined these issues, I offer a Pyrrhonian response to Penelope Maddy's attempt to reject skepticism within the form of naturalism that she calls “second philosophy” (Maddy, 2007, 2017) and to Timothy Williamson's attempt to avoid skepticism from emerging within his knowledge‐first approach (Williamson, 2000). Some (...) lessons about Pyrrhonism result. (shrink)

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, naturalism has become one of the most prominent philosophical orthodoxies in the Western academy. Yet naturalism is more often assumed than defended. The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism offers a systematic introduction that defines, discusses and defends philosophical naturalism. Essays tackle naturalism's role in existing cultural conversations, from Libertarianism to Confucianism, and provide detailed examinations of philosophical concepts like metaphysics, realism, feminism, science, free will, and ethics as viewed through (...) a naturalist lens. With contributions from an international array of established and emerging scholars from across the humanities, the collection encapsulates contemporary debates in the field. The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism provides an enlightening and accessible guide for self-identified naturalists and philosophy students who are new to naturalism alike. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Christian Naturalism: Christian Thinking for Living in This World Only by Karl E. PetersDaniel J. OttChristian Naturalism: Christian Thinking for Living in This World Only. Karl E. Peters. Boston: Wipf & Stock, 2022. xvi + 152 pp. $25.00 paperback; $22.00 eBook; $40.00 hardcover.The number of scholars who would call themselves Christian naturalists and the number of books that think through what it means to be both (...) Christian and naturalist are quite small. Karl E. Peters has been an outstanding figure in this small group for many years. He is a leader in the science and religion dialogue in the United States and has been thinking theologically for a long time about what it means to be a Christian in an age of science. For these reasons, I was eager to read Peters’s Christian Naturalism as it promised to be a concise and systematic summary of his thinking about Christian Naturalist theology. What I found was a book that may have its uses but is not always successful in both its approach and its argumentation.Peters states in the Introduction that the book is “intentionally written for a general audience” (xi), and he maintains an accessible style and vocabulary throughout. Often, the book has an autobiographical quality as Peters weaves in reflection on his own educational journey in both science and theology. Chapters 1 and 3 helpfully lay out a brief comparison of ancient cosmologies and a contemporary scientific cosmology. Chapter 3 is a good example of some of the interesting heuristics that Peters uses throughout as he tells the story of the beginnings of the universe and the emergence of life on Earth in a first-person narrative. The rest of the book proceeds in brief and accessible treatments of categories one would typically find in theology primers: God, Jesus, evil and sin, salvation, ethics, and after death. The remainder of this review will take up two of these categories: 1) evil, sin, and ethics and 2) after death. The former will serve as an example of the book’s relative weaknesses and the latter as an example of the book’s promise and usefulness.“Human Evil,” chapter 4, begins promisingly. Peters builds on an earlier introduction to the idea that we can associate “God” with the creative processes at work in the universe or with creativity itself. Here, Peters argues that being faithful to creativity becomes the norm for Christian faith and morality. “So, being moral means sustaining the well-being of already created dynamic systems and at the same time being open to creativity (God) and the emergence of new systems” (42). Perhaps these arguments would be better positioned at the [End Page 97] beginning of a chapter on morality and ethics rather than the chapter on evil and sin, though, especially since the corollary definition of sin doesn’t come for another twenty-four pages. There, Peters explains that “sin (the Christian term for human evil) is the attempt to limit the work of creativity (God) and to limit what is included in the family of life that arises from the work of creativity (God)” (66). These two definitions taken together offer one of the most theologically pregnant ideas in the book. Unfortunately, they are not pursued and applied in a systematic way throughout the remainder of this chapter and into chapters 7 and 8 on ethics and Christian practice. What we get, instead, is a collection of reflections on various ethical topics including: racism, xenophobia, sexism, and climate change.Perhaps if these sections were retitled “Karl’s Reflections on Wrestling with White, Male Privilege,” the reader would have the right expectation and their usefulness would reemerge. But as they stand they often lose the thread of their connections to his theological definitions and sometimes slip into problematic assumptions. The latter is exhibited when Peters employs the first-person again, this time in reference to certain social histories, as when “you and I” migrated from north Africa to the Caucasus Mountains (47), or when “you and I arrived in America from England in 1630” (58). The assumed “you” seems to be white, male people of anglo origin and therefore cuts... (shrink)

The usual way of discussing normativity and naturalism is by running through a standard range of issues: the relations of fact and value, objectivity, reason and emotion, is and ought, and the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’. This is a naturalism that is virtually silent on nature. I outline an alternative approach that relates normativity to our nature as living beings, for whom specific things are good or bad for us. Our nature as evaluative beings is shown to be rooted (...) in and emergent from this biological normativity. There is also significant downward causation, such that our brain-bodies are continually modified by our experience and thoughts. Cultures, as emergent from the affordances of our brain-bodies, create further extensive, irreducible sources of normativity, albeit ones which do not wholly escape biological normativity and can impact back on it. (shrink)

The aim of this expository paper is to give an informal overview of a plausible naturalistic case for free will. I will describe what I take to be the main naturalistically motivated challenges for free will and respond to them by presenting an indispensability argument for free will. The argument supports the reality of free will as an emergent higher-level phenomenon. I will also explain why the resulting picture of free will does not conflict with the possibility that the (...) fundamental laws of nature are deterministic, and I will address some common objections. (shrink)

We propose an objective and justifiable ethics that is contingent on the truth of evolutionary theory. We do not argue for the truth of this position, which depends on the empirical question of whether moral functions form a natural class, but for its cogency and possibility. The position we propose combines the advantages of Kantian objectivity with the explanatory and motivational advantages of moral naturalism. It avoids problems with the epistemological inaccessibility of transcendent values, while avoiding the relativism or (...) subjectivism often associated with moral naturalism. Our position emerges out of criticisms of the contemporary sociobiological views of morality found in the writings of Richard Alexander, Michael Ruse, and Robert Richards. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article presents a philosophy of science for ecology – deep naturalism – based on Roy Bhaskar’s transcendental realism. It includes a model of the emergence of ecosystems, analogous to...

In response to recent theories of emergence which attempt to examine system dynamics and the evolution of complexity from physics to biology and consciousness, a number of theologians have attempted to distill religious insights from a philosophical concept of emergence. Recent work by Terrence Deacon, however, which emphasizes constraint and a process understanding of complexity, undercuts significant features in emergent theologies, namely the privileging of certain loci within emergent complexity, an emphasis on efficient causation, and, theologically, an agential (...) and personal God. The final section of this article, using the example of Navaho religious thought, argues that other religious insights which centralize norm-ativity, global features of complexity, and are depersonalized, have greater traction with current scientific theories of emergence. (shrink)

Naturalism dominated twentieth century American philosophy.1 Naturalism is a philosophical worldview that relies upon experience, reason, and especially science for developing an understanding of reality. Naturalism demands that these three modes of understanding together shall control our notion of reality. Varieties of naturalism emerge because the many essential factors of experience, reason, and science can be coherently related in numerous ways. All naturalisms demand that experience, reason, and science be taken most seriously so that no fourth (...) mode of understanding can be permitted to override them. This triadic unity moderates the excesses of phenomenalism and idealism, and filters out spiritualism and .. (shrink)

Some materialists believe that physics is rich enough to bridge Levine's Explanatory Gap1, while others believe that it is not. Here I promote an intermediate position holding that physics is rich enough to explain why this gap seems more intractable than similar inter-theoretic explanatory gaps, without providing a full-blown “physical” explanation of consciousness. At a minimum, such an approach needs to explore the prospects of empirical discoveries that can diminish the power of anti-physicalist arguments like Chalmers's “conceivability argument”2 and Jackson's (...) “knowledge argument.” While this is not an easy task, recent advances in the physics of spacetime and information convince us that these prospects are not poor. The empirical bent of this approach suggests framing it as a naturalist theory of mind seeking to situate or make room for consciousness within our great naturalist system, but the reliance of this approach on recent (re)conceptions of time and information pulls the carpet out from under essential concepts like concreteness and causation, thus demanding a radically reconfigured naturalism, or neo-naturalism. The question that will frame this discussion is, “What could possibly count as an empirical fact that can help naturalize consciousness?”. (shrink)

Although pride has been central to philosophical and religious discussions of emotion for thousands of years, it has largely been neglected by psychologists. However, in the past decade a growing body of psychological research on pride has emerged; new theory and findings suggest that pride is a psychologically important and evolutionarily adaptive emotion. In this article we review this accumulated body of research and argue for a naturalist account of pride, which presumes that pride emerged by way of natural selection. (...) In this view, pride is prevalent in human life because of the functional and adaptive role it has played in the attainment, maintenance, and communication of social status throughout our evolutionary history. (shrink)

Has the emergence of post-positivism in philosophy of science changed the terms of the “is/ought” dichotomy? If it has demonstrated convincingly that there are no “facts” apart from the theoretical frames and evaluative standards constructing them, can such a cordon sanitaire really be upheld between “facts” and values? The point I wish to stress is that philosophy of science has had a central role in constituting and imposing the fact/value dichotomy and a revolution in the philosophy of science should not (...) leave the dichotomy unaffected. The connection between post-positivism and naturalism will be my guiding thread in considering this “last dogma of positivism.” First this essay will specify the sense of naturalism that it will take to be essential to the post-positivist philosophy of science: the deflation of the notion of the “purity” of scientific knowledge. Then it will turn to the question of the implications that follow for the “autonomy” of ethics, including the danger posed by a new form of scientistic reductionism. (shrink)

Naturalism about the mind is typically associated with some kind of physicalism. This paper argues that this association is a mistake and that, gi-ven the naturalist’s commitment to the primacy of empirical evidence, natural-ists should be open to different commitments. It is further argued that natural-ists about the mind should be emergentists because of the epistemological attitude that is at the core of the emergentist position, properly understood.

In the paper, I propose a project of social coordination as naturalistic social ontology (CNSO) based on the rules-in-equilibria theory of social institutions (Guala and Hindriks 2015; Hindriks and Guala 2015). It takes coordination as the main ontological unit of the social, a mechanism homological across animals and humans, for both can handle coordination problems: in the forms of “animal conventions” and social institutions, respectively. On this account, institutions are correlated equilibria with normative force. However, if both humans and animals (...) solve coordination problems in a similar way, and only humans have social institutions, how do the latter evolve? I suggest identifying possible causes of this evolution among cognitive capacities like mindreading and imitation by building dynamic models. Social ontology becomes constrained by the evolution of the forms of coordination and by the cognitive mechanisms involved in the emergence and persistence of social institutions. It means that it becomes bound to what might be derived from social institutions, i.e., social roles, structures and their derivatives. It shows how conceptual relations might emerge from causal. I conclude the paper with the discussion of the relationship between involved types of explanation, mechanistic and equilibrium ones. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate some important trends in contemporary naturalist aesthetics in relation to two decisive issues. Firstly, it is important to explicitly clarify what kind of naturalism is at stake within the debate, more specifically whether an account of the topic involves forms of physical reductionism, emergentism, and/or continuistic views of art and culture with nature. Secondly, we argue that it is necessary to define what conception of art is assumed as paradigmatic: whether this conception deals with (...) basically autonomist approaches to art, assuming aesthetic experience to coincide with the disinterested contemplation of formal features, independently of cognitive, practical, and ethical implications, or whether the arts are considered an enhancement of the features of human expe- rience and developments of other human behaviours. The second part of the paper will investigate some recent developments in current neuroaesthetics and fresh enactivist proposals in the aesthetic field which display a tendency toward a non-reductive naturalism, views of the arts as continuous with other modes of behav- iour and more conscious attitudes about the risks of scientism within scientific in- vestigations. Generally speaking, we espouse an idea of culture as the natural development of human organic experience that involves new emerging properties depending on the re-organization of already existing natural resources and favour continuistic and emergentist views as more suited to dealing with specific prob- lems in the field of the arts and as better responding to the criticism of irrelevancy directed against the latter, compared to reductive naturalist approaches. (shrink)

The concept of emergence has seen a significant resurgence in philosophy and the sciences, yet debates regarding emergentist and reductionist visions of the natural world continue to be hampered by imprecision or ambiguity. Emergent phenomena are said to arise out of and be sustained by more basic phenomena, while at the same time exerting a "top-down" control upon those very sustaining processes. To some critics, this has the air of magic, as it seems to suggest a kind of circular (...) causality. Other critics deem the concept of emergence to be objectionably anti-naturalistic. Objections such as these have led many thinkers to construe emergent phenomena instead as coarse-grained patterns in the world that, while calling for distinctive concepts, do not "disrupt" the ordinary dynamics of the finer-grained (more fundamental) levels. Yet, reconciling emergence with a (presumed) pervasive causal continuity at the fundamental level can seem to deflate emergence of its initially profound significance. This basic problematic is mirrored by similar controversy over how best to characterize the opposite systematizing impulse, most commonly given an equally evocative but vague term, "reductionism." The original essays in this volume help to clarify the alternatives: inadequacies in some older formulations and arguments are exposed and new lines of argument on behalf the two visions are advanced. (shrink)

In this article I address the issue of the ontological conditions of possibility for a naturalistic notion of emergence, trying to determine its fundamental differences from the atomist, vitalist, preformationist and potentialist alternatives. I will argue that a naturalistic notion of ontological emergence can only succeed if we explicitly refuse the atomistic fundamental ontological postulate that asserts that every entity is endowed with a set of absolutely intrinsic properties, being qualitatively immutable through its extrinsic relations. Furthermore, it will be shown (...) that, ironically enough, this metaphysical assumption is implicitly shared by all the above mentioned alternatives to Emergentism. The current article concludes that the notion of organization by itself is not enough, and that ontological emergence can only be justified by assuming a relational ontological perspective that, in opposition both to atomism and holism, defends that the existence-conditions, the identity and the causal behavior of any emergent systemic property can only be conceived, and explained, as constructed by and through specific networks of qualitatively transformative relational processes that occur between the system’s components and between the system and its environment. Additionally, I try to explain how one can make sense of the idea that an emergent phenomenon is both dependent on, and autonomous from, its emergence base. (shrink)