Navigating Complexity: Between Emergence and Reduction

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

Complex systems often seem to exhibit surprisingly novel properties and behaviours which resist analysis in terms of the more-simple components that make up the system, raising questions such as: Is the more-complex something over and above the more-simple? Are apparently ‘higher-level’ entities autonomous? The dominant approach, reductionism, holds that such novelty can be accounted for in terms of the most basic components of the system. But a range of recalcitrant cases which resist such analysis have placed the orthodoxy under increasing pressure, leading to renewed interest in emergentism, which holds that genuinely novel, distinct entities arise in such cases. But the inference from the failure of reduction to emergentism holds only if these are the only available options. This project aims to establish the viability of approaches outside the emergence-reduction binary and to develop and defend a novel model occupying a middle ground between emergence and reduction: Flat Holism, according to which whilst there are no ‘levels of reality’, complex systems sometimes determine effects holistically. It will meet theses aims by exploring the foundations of the debate; developing Flat Holism and exploring its advantages and how it fits with concrete cases. Finally, it will address applications to areas of interest in philosophy of mind—especially regarding empirically promising accounts of consciousness. Given the considerable current interest in the relationship between the more- and less-complex in both philosophy and natural science, this project is anticipated to have significant impact and the potential for both breakthroughs and renewal through delivering an expanded conceptual toolkit with which to tackle the debate, increasing understanding of its foundations and developing a powerful, novel framework with distinctive merits when compared to traditional accounts that promises to avoid problems associated with them and to be simpler and more unified.